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LETTEES, CONVEESATIONS, . ^ 



EECOLLECTIOTs^S. 



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LETTEES, 



CONYEESATIONS AND EECOLLECTIONS 



OF 



S. T. COLERIDGE. 



EDITED BY 



THOMAS ALLSOP, 

I 

** OP NUTFIELD, IN THE COUNTY OF SURREY, AND FORMERLY OF NO. 1, ROYAL EXCHANGE 
BUILDINGS, AND A MEa-'BEB O^ THE STOCK EXC'H VN.;tE " 



Pliny writ tis Letters for the Public ; so did Seneca, so did Balzac, Yoiture, &c. &c. ; Tully 
did not : and therefore these give us more pleasure than any which have come down to us from 
antiquity. When we read them we pry into a secret which was intended to be kept from us. 
That is a pleasure. We see Cato and Brutus and Pompey and others such as they really were, 
and not such as the gaping multitude of their own age took them to be, or as Historians and 
Poets have represented them to ovirs. That is another pleasure.— Bolingbroke to Svitft. 



SEGOND EDITION. 

LONDON: 
GEOOMBRTDGE & SONS, 5, PATERNOSTER ROW; 

WATERLOW & SONS, BIKCHTN LANE, LONDON WALL, 
AND 49, PARLIAMENT STREET, WESTMINSTER., 

1858. 






C!ATu>v»Hipr. ITniv. Lib. 



LONDON: 

PRINTED BY WATEBLOW AND SONS, 

LONDON V/LL. 



r< 



PREFACE 



SECOND EDITION. 



The following admirable and instructive Letters^ 
forming portion of a Correspondence between Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge and his friend and favourite disciple 
Thomas Allsop, were originally printed in the year 
1836. Although pubKshed in a very expensive form, 
the first edition was quickly exhausted, and the 
Work has now been for some time out of print. 
Being impressed ^^ith a conviction of the great value 
of these reminiscences of the Great Thinker, I have 
for some time had it in contemplation to reprint 
the Work in a form accessible to the majority of 
readers — an intention of which the execution has 
been hitherto prevented by the ceaseless claims of an 
engrossing and anxious occupation. Probably this 
might have been still longer deferred had not recent 
circumstances rendered it incumbent on me, for 



VUl PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

reasons of a different nature, to lay this corres- 
pondence before the public. 

It haying been stated that Mr. Thomas Allsop 
was cognizant of and sanctioned the attempted 
tyrannicide of the 14th January, which resulted (as 
it could hardly have failed to do) in the death of 
innocent persons, I deem it my duty, by the 
repubhcation of this work, to show to the world 
what manner of man he is, and in what estimation 
he was held by one of the greatest Philosophers and 
most profound Thinkers of this or any age. 

Independently of all personal considerations, I 
have a high gratification in giving increased publicity 
to this work. The vigorous manUness of tone and 
independence of thought Avith which it is pervaded, 
contrast markedly with the great bulk of conventional 
literature, and cannot fail to be appreciated by those 
who are accustomed to think for themselves, and not 
blindly to adopt the ideas and habits of mind pre- 
vailing at the time and place of their existence. 

R. A. 

Stock Exchange, 
April 19, 1858. 



PREFA CE. 



Havixg for more than sixteen years enjoyed a large 
share of the affectionate regards, sympathj^, and 
inmost confidence of the most variously gifted and 
extraordinary man that has appeared in these latter 
days, it has been to me a most melancholy, though 
not unpleasing, task, to arrange these materials, so 
as to give to you, my dearest childi^en, some idea — 
alas, how poor ! how inadequate it 7nust be — of that 
friend for whose sake you are, if possible, more dear 
to me. 

To you, my dearest EKzabeth, the Fairy Prattler 
of the Letters, and to you, Robin, the still meek 
Boy, I am especially desirous to convey, through 
these fragments, some better, some more entirely 
individuaKsed, notion of the earliest friend, best, 
and first lost. 

Of the no less loving, not less to be loved Charles 
Lamb, having been house-mates, yom* recollections 
need not this aid. I stood beside the Grave, and 
saw when it received their loved forms, and, since 
then, I seem to have lived on their memories. 

Lamentation and regTets for the loss of such men 



X PREFACE. 

would be felt by all who knew — and were worthy to 
be known by — them, as a grieyous wrong done to 
their memories. If we have not learned from, and 
for, these men, that boisterous gTief, grief of which 
the signs are external and visible, is an inadequate 
and unfitting tribute ; then, as relates to the manner 
in which they would be remembered, they have failed 
to make themselves understood. 

Thoughts that are indeed too deep for tears mingle 
with all our recollections of that grey-haired Old Man, 
that mightiest Master of Poetry and of Philosophy 
in its truest and only valuable sense. 

To have known such a man, to have shared his 
many sorrows and sufferings, and to have partaken 
of the few and far between gleams of glad and joyous 
sunshine which fell to his lot, are recollections to be 
cherished in the inner sanctuary of our hearts. Pew 
indeed as were the gleams of genial and warm and 
cordial uprising of that noble and pure-minded Spirit 
in later years, still to him it was an ever new delight 
to impart all he had learnt, all he had experienced, 
and much in which he could only have been his own 
teacher, to those who sought him in sincerity and 
simphcity of heart. 

I seek most earnestly to make you know the minds 
of these, to you, Ancient of Days; and I think I 
shall best effect this by allowing them to speak for 
themselves. '' Of the Dead,^^ says the old adage, 
" nothing but what is good.'' I say to you " nothing 
— or what is true,'^ 



PREFACE. XI 

Of the first of these friends, both lost in the past 
year, I shall chiefly speak to you; more full and 
sufficient records of the last I earnestly hope to see 
from the Pen of one every way fitted, both by Ioyc 
and fine appreciation of his Character, to the task. 

I have given with the Letters such brief Notices 
and Recollections as seemed likely to enable you 
to appreciate that great and extraordinarj^ mind, 
that greatest and truest pliilosopher, in the highest 
and only true sense of that term, in its combination 
with Love. ♦ 

Upon the Letters and Conversations, however, I 
chiefly rely for conveying to you some sKght image, 
though vastly inadequate, of the mind of this won- 
derful, this myriad-minded man, whose loss is 
however far too recent to admit of just or adequate 
Estimation. 

Cherished and sustained by his extraordinary 
Intellect, and still more by the Love and Sympathy 
in which, Hke a vast reservoir, he always super- 
abounded, and the fullness of which seemed to arise 
from its overflowing, I have been able to arrive at 
settled and definite conclusions upon all matters to 
which I have heretofore attached value or interest. 
When I say that I have arrived at settled conclu- 
sions, you will not for a moment beheve that my 
opinions can or ought to be received by others of 
a totally different experience, as truths for their 
minds ; still less that matters which depend upon 
individual experience and temperament can be per- 



Xll PREFACE. 

manent truths for all time. You will find, and this 
it is which I wish to impress upon your minds, 
that a spirit of pure and intense humanity, a spirit 
of love and kindness, to which nothing is too large, 
for wliich nothing is too small, wiU be to you, as it 
has ever been to me, its own "exceeding great 
reward." 

This, my dear Children, and I do not now 
address you only, nor your younger brothers and 
sisters, but I would fain speak to, and, on this 
ppint at least, could wish to be heard by, aU young 
and confiding minds, — has been to me a solace in 
sorrow, an unspeakable reliance and support when 
aU outward has been lowering and overcast. This 
indeed it is, in the language of an early letter, 
" Wliich, like an ample Palace, contains many 
mansions for every other Idnd of Knowledge (or 
renders it unnecessary) ; which deepens and ex- 
tends the interest of every other (knowledge or 
faculty), gives it new charms and additional pur- 
pose : the study of which, rightly pursued, is 
beyond any other enterteaning, beyond aU others 
tends at once to tranquillise and enliven^ to keep 
the mind elevated and stedfast, the Heart humble 
and tender.'' In this is the purest source of mental 
self-rehance, of self-dependence, and theuce Inde- 
pendence, under all circumstances. 



LETTERS, CONVERSATIONS, 



RECOLLECTIONS. 



LETTER I. 

Deae Sie, Jan, 28tk, 1818, 

Your friendly letter was first delivered to me at the lec- 
ture-room door on yesterday evening, ten minutes before the 
lecture, and my spirits were so sadly depressed by the circum- 
stance of my hoarseness, that I was Hterally incapable of read- 
ing it. I now express my acknowledgments, and with them 
the regret that I had not received the letter in time to have 
availed myself of it. 

When I was young I used to laugh at flatter)^, as, on account 
of its absm^dity, I now abhor it, from my repeated observations 
of its mischievous effects. Amongst these, not the least is, that 
it renders honom^able natures more slow and reluctant in ex- 
pressing their real feelings in praise of the deserving, than, for 
the interests of truth and virtue, might be desired. For the 
weakness of our moral and intellectual being, of which the 
comparatively strongest are often the most, and the most pain- 
fully conscious, needs the confirmation derived from the coin- 
cidence and sympathy of the friend, as much as the voice of 
honour within us denounces the pretences of the flatterer. Be 
assured, then, that I write as I think, v/hen I tell you that, 
from the style and thoughts of your letter, I should have drawn 

1 



a very different conclusion from that which you appear to have 
done, concerning both your talents and the cultivation which 
they have received. Both the matter and manner are manly, 
simple, and correct. 

Had I the time In my power, compatibly with the perform- 
ance of duties of Immediate urgency, I would endeavour to 
give you, by letter, the most satisfactory answer to your ques- 
tions that my reflections and the experience of my own fortunes 
could supply. But, at all events, I will not omit to avail myself 
of your judicious suggestion In my last lecture. In which It will 
form a consistent part of the subject and purpose of the dis- 
course. Meantime, believe me, with great respect. 
Your obliged fellow- student 

of the true and the beseeming, 

S. T. Coleridge. 

The suggestion here alluded to was, if I remember rightly, 
as to the best mode of re-exciting that Interest in and for 
mental cultivation and refinement, which, from lapse of tune, 
had in most men actively employed, become dormant. This 
was fully treated in the last lecture. 



LETTER IL 

Dear Sir, Sept 20th, 1818. 

Those who have hitherto chosen to take notice of me, as 
known to them only by my public character, have for the 
greater part taken out, not, indeed, a poetical, but a critical, 
license, to make game of me, instead of sending game to me. 
Thank heaven ! I am in this respect more tough than tender. 
But, to be serious, I heartily thank you for your polite remem- 
brance; and, though my feeble health and valetudinarian 
stomach force me to attach no little value to the present itself, 
I feel still more obliged by the kindness that prompted it. 
I trust that you will not come within the purlieus of Highgate 



LETTEKS, ETC, 



without giving me the opportunity of assuring you personally 
that I am, ^ith sincere respect. 

Your obliged, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



LETTER III. 

My Dear Sir, Dec. 2nd, 1818. 

I cannot express how kind I felt your letter. Would to 
Heaven I had had many with feelings like yours, " accustomed 
to express themselves wannly and (as far as the word is ap- 
plicable to you, even) enthusiastically.'' But, alas ! dm-ing 
the prime manhood of my intellect I had nothing but cold 
water thrown on my efforts. I speak not now of my systematic 
and most unprovoked maligners. On them I have retorted 
only by pity and by prayer. These may have, and doubtless 
have J joined with the frivolity of ^^ the reading public '^ in 
checking and almost in preventing the sale of my works ; and 
so far have done injmy to my purse. Me they have not 
injured. But I have loved with enthusiastic self-oblivion those 
who have been so well pleased that I should, year after year, 
flow with a hundred nameless rills into their main stream, that 
they could find nothing but cold praise and effective dis- 
com^agement of every attempt of mine to roll onward in a 
distinct cun^ent of my own ; who admitted that the Ancient 
Mariner, the Christabel, the Remorse, and some pages of the 
Friend were not without merit, but were abundantly anxious 
to acquit their judgments of any blindness to the veiy nu- 
merous defects. Yet they knew that to praise^ as mere praise, 
I was characteristically, almost constitutionally, indifferent. In 
sympathy alone I found at once nourishment and stimulus ; 
and for sympathy alone did my heart crave. Thej^ knew, too, 
how long and faithfully I had acted on the maxim, never to 
admit the faults of a work of genius to those who denied or 



4 LETTERS, ETC. 

were incapable of feeling and understanding the beauties ; not 
from wilful partiality, but as well knowing tbat in saying truth 
I should, to such critics, convey falsehood. If, in one instance, 
in my literary life, I have appeared to deviate from this rule, 
first, it was not till the fame of the writer (which I had been 
for fourteen years successively toiling like a second Ali to 
build up) had been established ; and, secondly and chiefly, with 
the purpose and, I may safely add, with the effect of rescuing 
the necessary task from Malignant Defamers, and in order to 
set forth the excellences and the trifling proportion which the 
defects bore to the excellences. But this, my dear sir, is a 
mistake to which affectionate natures are too liable, though I 
do not remember to have ever seen it noticed, — the mistaking 
those who are desirous and well pleased to be loved by you, 
for those who love you. Add, as a more general cause, the 
fact that I neither am nor ever have been of any party. What 
wonder, then, if I am left to decide which has been my worse 
enemy, the broad, pre- determined abuse of the Edinburgh 
Review, &c., or the cold and brief compliments, with the warm 
regrets^ of the Quarterly? After all, however, I have now biit 
one sorrow relative to the ill success of my literary toils (and 
toils they have been, though not undelightful toils)^ and this 
arises wholly from the almost insurmountable difficulties which 
the axixieties of to-day oppose to my completion of the great 
work, the form and materials of which it has been the employ^ 
ment of the best and most genial hours of the last twenty years 
to mature and collect. 

If I could but have a tolerably numerous audience to my 
first, or first and second Lectures on the History of Philo- 
sophy, I should entertain a strong hope of success, because I 
know that these lectm-es will be foimd by far the most interest- 
ing and entertaining of any that I have yet delivered, inde- 
pendent of the more permanent interests of rememberable 
instruction. Few and unimportant would the errors of men 
be, if they did but know, first, what they themselves meant ; 



LETTERS, ETC. O 

and, secondly, wliat tlie words mean by whicli they attempt to 
convey their meaning ; and I can conceive no subject so well 
fitted to exemplify the mode and the importance of these two 
points as the History of Philosophy, treated as in the scheme 
of these lectures. Trusting that I shall shortly have the 
pleasure of seeing you here, 

I remain, my dear Sir, 

Yours, most sincerely, 
T. AUsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

This letter, as well as some more specific allusions and 
charges in after letters, I have thought it a sacred duty to 
publish ; no admiration or reverence for the Great Living 
being for a moment to be placed against the higher duty to the 
greater, or, perhaps, I should say, the more greatly various, 
Dead. The conclusion to which I have come, from an intunate 
and thorough knowledge of the circumstances, is, that judged 
by all received rules, my much-loved friend had not generous 
usage. Far n^om me, however, be it to attribute blame ; I am 
rather inclined to ascribe this seeming want of generous feeling 
of sympathy, to an incompatibility of adaptation. How ex- 
pressive is this passage : — " In sympathy alone 1 found at 
once nourishment and stimulus ; and for sj^mpathy alone 
did my heart crave," coupled as it is in my knowledge with 
the mention of his labour for fom-teen years to build up the 
fame of his friend ; and how affecting the allusion to the 
mistake of having supposed " those to love him who were well 
pleased to be loved by him." 



LETTER IV, 

My dear Sir, Highgate^ Sept, SOth, 1819. 

Retm-ned from Eamsgate, I hasten to assm^e you that, 

next to seeing you, I have pleasure in hearing from you : and 

wish the former in preference, not merely from the greater 



b LETTERS, ETC. 

mutual enjoyment, but likewise because one can convey more, 
and with greater assurance of being understood, in an hour, 
than one could T\Tite in a day. On the other hand, letters 
are more permanent, and an epistolary correspondence more 
endearing, like aU marks of remembrance in absence. 

My sentiments concerning the expediency, and both moral 
and intellectual advantages, of a trade or profession, for such as 
fix their ultimate end on objects nobler than trades or profes- 
sions can bestow on the most favoured of their followers, may 
be learnt from the eleventh chapter of my Literary Life, which, 
though addressed to a small and particular class, yet permits a 
more general application. To you, my dear young friend, I 
should say, temptations and preventives — the poisons and the 
antidotes — are pretty evenly dispersed through all the different 
accredited paths of Kfe. Nay, those temptations which are 
foreknown and foreseen as most appertinent to our particular 
calling, are commonly least dangerous, or even cease to be 
temptations to a mind forearmed by principles and aspirations 
like yours. The false step is more likely to take place in the 
recoil than the advance ; in the neglect rather than in the too 
eager pursuit of the means ; in under, rather than over, valuing 
the advantages of wealth and worldly respectability. The true 
plan on which you should regulate your conduct and feelings, 
(that at least, which to me appears such) is the following. 
Propose to yourself from the present hour such views of action 
and enjoyment, as wiU make the leisure attached to indepen- 
dence, and honourably earned by previous industry, the fair 
object of a mse man's efforts and a good man's desires. Mean- 
time, let the chosen employments of the years in hope be the 
relaxations of the time present, of the years devoted to present 
duties, and, among these, to the means of realising that hope ; 
thus you wiU answer two great ends at once. Your inward 
trains of thought, your faculties, and your feelings, mil be pre- 
served in a fitness and, as it were, contempered to a life of ease, 
and capable of enjoying leisure, because both able and disposed 



to employ it. Secondly, wliile you thus render futui^e affluence 
more and more desirable, you T^ill at the same time prevent all 
undue impatience, and disarm the temptation of poisoning the 
allotted interval by anxieties, and anxious schemes and efforts 
to get rich in haste. There is yet one other inducement to look 
on yom* existing appointment with complacency. Every im- 
provement in knowledge, and the moral power of wielding and 
directing it, will tell for more, — have a wider and more 
benignant influence, — than the same accomplishment would in 
a man who belonged to one of the learned professions. Both 
yom' information and yom' example will fall where they are 
most wanted, like the noiseless dews in Malta, where rain comes 
seldom and no regular streams are to be met with. As to your 
present studies, for such portions of yom' time as you can pru- 
dently appropiiate to reading, ^vithout wrong to the claims of 
health and social relaxation, there is one department of know- 
ledge, which, like an ample palace, contains within itself 
mansions for every other knowledge ; which deepens and ex - 
tends the interest of every other, gives it new chaiTiis and 
additional pm'pose ; the study of which, rightly and liberally 
pursued, is beyond any other entertaining^ beyond all others 
tends at once to tranquillize and enliven, to keep the mind 
elevated and stedfast, the heart humbler and tender: it is 
biblical theology — the philosophy of religion, the religion of 
philosophy. I would that I could refer you to any hook in 
which such a plan of reading had been sketched out, in detail 
or even but generally. 

Alas ! I know of none. But most gladly will I make the 
attempt to supply this desideratum by conversation, ^and then 
by letter. But of this when I have next the pleasure of seeing 
you at Highgate. 

You have perhaps heard that my publisher is a bankrupt. 



8 LETTERS, ETC. 

All the profits from tlie sale of my writings, which I should 
have had, and which, in spite of the accumulated disadvantages 
under which the works were published, would have been con- 
siderable, I have lost ; and not only so, but have been obliged, 
at a sum larger than all the profits made by my lectures, to 
purchase myself my own books and the half copyrights. Well, 
I am now sole proprietor, and representing my works by 
cyphers, and the author by I, my emblem might be OOOOI. 
I have withdrawn them from sale. This is rather hard, but 
perhaps my comet may some time or other have its perihelion 
of popularity, and then the tail, you know, whisks round to 
the other end ; and for OOOOI, lo ! and behold, 10,000. Mean- 
time, enough for me to thank God that, relatively to my 
fellow men at least, I have been " sinned against, not sinning;^' 
and relatively to my Maker, these afflictions are but penances 
of mercy, less than the least of my forfeitures. — I hope you will 
soon take pot-luck with us. 

Believe me, with esteem and regard, yours, 
T. AUsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

Leaving out the particular expression of biblical theolog7/j 
liable to be interpreted, or, rather, misinterpreted by every 
believer in belief according to his own particular faith or delu- 
sion, and keeping constantly in mind what the writer intended 
to convey, viz., the philosophy of humanity, the humanity of 
philosophy, I am not aware that I can recommend to your 
perusal, or press earnestly and afiectionately upon your atten- 
tion, any letter, essay, or advice, so beautifully expressed, or, 
when applied to practice, so well adapted to secure that hap- 
piness which surpasseth understanding ; far, very far, surpasseth 
adequate expression. Often do I dwell upon the recommenda- 
tion, to '^ let the chosen employments of the years in hope be 
the relaxations of the time present, of the years devoted to 
present duties, and, among these, to the means of realising that 
hope : thus you will answer two great ends at once. Tour 



inward trains of thought, your faculties and your feelings, will 
be preserved in a fitness, and, as it were, contempered to a Kfe 
of ease, and capable of enjoying leisure, because both able and 
disposed to employ it. Secondly ; while you thus render 
affluence more desirable^ you will prevent all undue impatience, 
and disarm the temptation of poisoning the allotted interval by 
anxieties J and anxious schemes and efforts to get rich in haste J ^ 
I would fain hope that, not only for you, but for all others, 
riches, as suclij will be better appreciated ere your career com- 
mences ; this is my anxious hope for others — for all. For you, 
it shall be my care to place before you irresistible examples and 
illustrations of the frightful evils of contemplating riches, 
power, fame, as ends to be sought and valued for their ot^ti 
sake, not as means to greater and higher e7ids^ — the high aim 
and piu'pose of destroying these fruitful sources of crime and 
miserjT-^ or of subjecting them to general not individual ad- 
vancement. Alas ! could I but recal 

*' The time when, thoiigL. my path was rough, 
The joy within me dallied with distress, 
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff 
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness ; 
When hope grew round me like the twining vine, 
And fruits and foliage, not my own, seemed mine:'' 

I might then have some hope of convejHlng to you mth good 
effect the results of my experience. 

• *' But seared thoughts now how me down to earthy 
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth. 
But, oh ! each visitation 
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, 
My shaping spirit of imagination. 
For not to think of what I needs must feel, 
But to be still and patient all I can, 
And haply hy abstruse research to steal 
From my own nature all the natural man,— 
This is my sole resource, my only plan ; 
Till that which suits a part infects the whole. 
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul." 



10 LETTERS, ETC. 

LETTEE V, 

My dear Sir, Dec. l^ih, 1819. 

Accept my affectionate thanks ; and, in mine, conceive 
those of my housemates included. Would to heaven I had 
more than barren thanks to offer you. If you, or rather your 
residence, were nearer to me, and I could have more of your 
society, I should feel this the less. It was, for me at least, 
unfortunate, that, almost every time you have been here, I 
should have been engaged in the only way that I should have 
suffered to be a pre- engagement, viz. the duties of friendship. 
These are now discharged ; and whenever you can give me a 
day, henceforward, I shall have nothing to do but to enjoy it. 
I could not help "winning an hour from the hard season,' ' as 
Milton says, the day before yesterday, by surrendering my 
reason to the detail of a day dream, as I was going over, and 
after I had gone over, a very pretty house, with beautiful 
garden and grounds, and a still more lovely prospect, at the 
moderate rent of £60 and taxes proportionally low, discussing 
the question mth myself, as seriously as if it were actually to 
be decided, how far the rising at eight, breakfasting, and 
riding, driving, or staging to London, and returning by the 
stage or otherwise, would be advantageous to your health ; 
and then the ways and means of improving and enjoying our 
Sundays, &c. All I can say in excuse of these air-built 
castles is, that they bring with them no bills for brick and 
mortar, no quarrels with the masons, no indignation at the 
deceits and lures of the architects, surveyor, &c., when the 
final expense is found to treble the amount of the well-paid 
and costly calculation : in short, that if they do no honour to 
the head, they leave no harm in the heart. And then, poeta 
fuimus : and the philosopher, though pressing with the weight 
of an Etna, cannot prevent the poet from occasionally changing 
sides, and manifesting his existence by smoke traversed by 
electrical flashes from the crater. 



LETTERS, ETC. 11 

Have you seen Cobbett's last number? It is the most 
plausible and the best ^^Titten of anything I have seen from 
his pen, and apparently written in a less fiendish spirit than 
the average of his weekly effusions. The self-complacency 
with which he assumes to himself exclusively, truths which he 
can call his own only as a horse-stealer can appropriate a 
stolen horse, by adding mutilation and deformities to robbery, 
is as artful as it is amusing. Still, however, he has given 
great additional publicity to weighty truths, as ex> gr, the 
hollo wness of commercial wealth ; and from whatever dirty 
corner or straw moppet the ventriloquist Truth causes her 
words to proceed, I not only listen, but must bear witness that 
it is Truth talking. His conclusions, however, are palpably 
absurd— give to an over-peopled island the countless back 
settlements of America, and countless balloons to carry thither 
man and maid, T\ife and brat, beast and baggage — and then we 
might rationally expect that a general crash of trade, manu- 
factures, and credit, might be as mere a summer thunderstorm 
in Great Britain as he represents it to be in America. 

One deep, most deep, impression of melancholy, did Cobbett's 
letter to Lord Liverpool leave on my mind, — the conviction 
that, wretch as he is, he is an overmatch in intellect for those, 
in whose hands Providence, in its retributive justice, seems to 
place the destinies of our country ; and who yet rise into 
respectability, when we compare them with their parliamen- 
tary opponents. ^ 

I am commanded to add an especial request, that it may not 
be long before you make yom-self visible on the banks of Lake 
Superior. 

Ever, my dear sir, 
Tours faithfully and affectionately, 
T. AUsop, Esq. S. T. Colekidge, 

The tendency of the age is now decidedly practical, and the 
advocates of abstractions will do well to admit the superiority 



12 LETTERS, ETC. 

of practical knowledge ; and to lay claim to It as springing 
directly from their speculations, from their generalizations. 
The very opinions here said to be heretical and damnable, are 
now held (such is the rapid advance of public opinion) to be 
stale and common-place, and have already given way to a far 
more searching inquiry into the nature and uses of all pro- 
perty. When we see a man go highly gifted, so far differing 
from the common sense of his contemporaries and immediate 
successors, stigmatize as a wretch, one of the most extraordi- 
nary ^witers of the day, for holding opinions which those con- 
temporaries have for the greatest part adopted, and many gone 
far beyond, we are forcibly struck with the absurdity of all 
ille-isms or affirmations. If we confine ourselves to the ex- 
pression of an opinion, or, if more honest, we confess our igno- 
rance of the matter at issue, we shall be more likely to approach 
true conclusions. 

Neither is it the fact, that Cobbett claimed himself to be the 
discoverer of any or all of the principles he advanced or advo- 
cated ; he combined the scattered truths of Paine and the pre- 
ceding vfriters into a practical shape ; and in that form he has 
brought them forward so clearly^ so often, and in so many 
ways, that he has forced the attention of his countrj^men to the 
CAUSES of the evils by which they are environed ; so impressed 
with the importance of those principles, that he will take no 
denial ; but, at the sacrifice of ease, and that loved country- 
life, and* those rural pursuits, in the midst of which he is so 
happy, and so fond of creating happiness, he prostrates oppo- 
sition, and is determined that what he has devoted his whole 
life to make easy to the meanest capacity, shall not perish for 
want of a fair trial. That Cobbett himself commits the same 
injustice towards others, I well know ; but this proceeds in his 
ease from an impatience of any rem.edies but his own, until his 
own has been tried. To you, to whom personal controversies 
will, as I hope, be pitiable, if not painful, I would say, that 
speculation upon the cause of an evil, is, like the punishment 



LETTEES, ETC. 13 

of a crime, useless in remedying that crime, and is only useful, 
if useful at all^ in preventing future crimes or evils. The 
direction of existing powers and combinations, and the forma- 
tion of new combinations, upon scientific and practical prin- 
ciples, are the matters of most importance at this time 5 and 
the knowledge necessary to the attainment and application of 
these principles, does not to me appear likely to be attained 
whilst men are in a state of social warfare ; whilst the imme- 
diate or apparent interests of one man are constantly opposed 
to those of another, and hoth^ impediments to the well-being of 
the whole. 



LETTER VI. 

My deae Sie, 2^th March, 1820. 

You must have thought it strange that I had taken no 
notice of so kind a letter from you ; but the truth is, I received 
the little packet supposing it to contain the Cobbett only, put 
it in my pocket for my reading at a leisure hour, and had not 
opened it until the day before I last saw you. Within a few 
days, I hope to lay myself open to you in an express letter ; 
till when, I can only say, that the affectionate interest you 
have taken in my well-being, has been not only a comfort but 
a spur, when I needed both, and was almost yielding at times 
to the apprehension, that I had sacrificed all that the world 
holds precious, without being able to do any effective good in 
a higher and nobler kind. I have sent the three volumes of 
the Friend, with my MS. corrections, and additions. The 
largest, that towards the end of the last philosophical essay in 
the third volume, had a two-fold object — to guard my own. 
character from the suspicion of pantheistic opinions, or Spino- 
sism (it was T\Titten, though not so much at large, before the 
work was printed, and omitted by mlfulness, or such careless- 
ness as does not fall far short of it) ; and next; to impress, as 



14 LETTERS, ETC. 

far as I could, the conviction that true philosophy, so far from 
having any tendency to unsettle the principles of faith, that 
may and ought to be common to all men, does itself actually 
require them as its premises ; nay, that it supposes them as its 
ground.* — I was highly gratified to hear, and from such a 
man too as Mr. John Hookham Frere, that a man of rank, 
and of a highly cultivated mind, who had become reluctantly 
a sceptic, or something more, respecting the Christian Religion, 
wholly in consequence of studying Leland, Lardner, Watson, 
Paley, and other defenders of the Gospel on the strength of 
the ^^ternal e\ddences — not of Christianity, but of the miracles 
with which its first preaching was accompanied — and of having 
been taught to regard the arguments, and mode of proof 
adopted in the works above mentioned, as the only rational 
ones, had read the Friend with great attention, and when he 
came to the passage in which I had explained the nature of 
miracles, their necessary dependance on a credible religion for 
their own credibility, &c., dropped the book (as he himself 
informed Mr. Frere), and exclaimed, " Thank God ! I can 
still believe in the Gospel — I can yet be a Christian." The 
remark that a miracle, divested of all connection with a doctrine, 
is identical with witchcraft, which in all ages has been re- 
garded with instinctive horror by the human mind, and the 
reference to our Lord^s own declarations concerning miracles, 
were among the passages that particularly impressed his 
mind. 

I should have sent a corrected copy of the Sibylline Leaves ; 
but for a two-legged little accident having torn out two leaves 
at the beginning, and I will no longer delay this parcel, but will 
transcribe at another time what \ had written in them, and I 
hope it will not be long before you let us see you. The people 



* Though myself opposed to apologetic prefaces or modifications of 
opinion to suit conventional influences, I give this note as an act of 
justice to its author. 



LETTERS, ETC. 15 

here are occupied in raising and distributing relief for the poor 
of the hamlet. On the first day there were seven hundred and 
fifty applicants to whom small sums were given ! It would be 
most un-christian moroseness not to feel delight in the un- 
wearied zeal with which every mode and direction of charity 
is supported ; and I hope that this is a sunshiny spot in our 
national character, and that this virtue will suspend the judg- 
ments that threaten the land. But it would, on the other 
hand, be wilful blindness not to see that the lower orders 
become more and more improvident in consequence, more and 
more exchange the sentiments of Englishmen for the feelings 
of Lazzaroni. 

God bless you ; and, S. T. Coleridge, 

P.S. — Charles and Mary Lamb dined with us on Sunday. 

When I next see you, that excellent brother and sister will 
supply me with half an hour^s interesting conversation. When 
you know the whole of him, you will love him in spite of all 
oddities and even faults — nay, I had almost said, for them — 
at leastj admire that under his visitations they were so few 
and of so little importance. Thank God, his circumstances 
are comfortable ; and so they ought, for he has been in the 
India House since his fourteenth year. 



I have subjoined the MS. addition mentioned above, and 
should wish you to read it with great care and attention in its 
proper place ; which is, after the word ' vacuum,' in page 263, 
vol. iii. of the ^ Friend.' 

If we thoughtfully review the course of argument pursued, we 
shall rest in the following as our sum and ultimatum. The dialectic 
intellect, by exertion of its own powers exclusively, may enable us to 
affirm the reality of an absohite Being, generally. But here it 
stops. It can command neither insight nor conviction concerning the 
existence (or even the possibility) of the world as distinct and different 
from Deity. It finds itself constrained to confound the Creator with 
the creation ; and then, cutting the knot it cannot solve, merges the 
latter in the former, and denies reahty to all finite existence. But 



16 LETTERS, ETC. 

here the philosophizer is condemned to meet with his sure confutation 
in his own secret dissatisfaction, and is forced at length to shelter 
himself from his own importunate queries in the wretched evasion, 
that of Nothings no solution can be required. Wretched indeed, and 
weak as desperate ! Nature herself — his own inevitable Nature — 
through every organ of sense, compels his own abused reason to 
reiterate the demand : How and whence did this sterile Nothing split 
or multiply into plurality f Whence this portentous transnihilation 
of Nothing into Nothings ? What, above all, is that inward mirror, 
the human mind, in and for Avhich these Nothings possess at least 
a relative existence ? Or dost thou wait till, with a more bit- 
ter irony, Pain and Anguish and Remorse ask thee, Are we too 
Nothings ? 

O youthful reader ! (for such The Friend dares anticipate), thou, 
that in my mind's eye, standest beside me, like my own youth ! 
Fresh and keen as the morning Hunter in the pursuit of Truth, 
glad and restless in the feeling of mental growth ! O learn early, 
that if the Head be the Light of the Heart, the Heart is the 
Life of the Head : yea, that Consciousness itself, that Conscious- 
ness of which all reasoning is the varied modification, is but the 
Reflex of the Conscience when most luminous ; and too often a 
fatuous vapour, a warmthless bewildering mockery of Light, exhaled 
from its corruption or stagnation. Mark the inevitable result of all 
consequent reasoning, when the intellect refuses to acknowledge a 
higher and deeper ground than itself can supply, and weens to possess 
within itself the centre of its own system ! From Zeno the Eleatrice 
to Spinoza, and from Spinoza to Schelling, Oken, and the German 
'' Natur-pliilosophen'^ of the present day, the Result has been, and ever 
must be, paistheism, under some one or other of its modes or dis- 
guises : and it is of awful importance to the speculative Inquirer to 
be aware, that the seemliest of these modes differs from the most 
repulsive, not in its consequences, which in all alike are Atheistic, but 
only as far as it evinces the efforts of the individual to hide these 
consequences from his own consciousness. 

This, then, I again repeat, is our ultimate conclusion. All specula- 
tive disquisition must begin with Postulates^ authorised and su.bstan- 
tiated by the conscience exclusively. From whatever point the 
reason may start, whether from the Things that are seen to the One 
Invisible, or from the idea of the Absolute One to the things that are 
seen, it will in either case find a chasm, which the moral being, the 
spirit and the religion of man, can alone fill up or overbridge. " The 

LIFE IS THE LIGHT OF MAN : '' and " WE LIVE BY FAITH." 



LETTERS, ETC. 17 

I may as well state here that the writer, possessing con- 
fessedly great and extraordinary powers, has been wholly and 
entirely misconceived, and by none more so than those who 
fondly deemed him of their belief. His SeZ/e/'was so capacious 
that it contained not- only theirs and a hundred others, but also 
their opposites, and existed in the equipoise or equilibrium. Thus 
in speaking as was his wont, of Peter, towards whom he felt an 
especial distaste, he was accustomed to refer to the passage in 
Matthew, ch. xix. ver. 27, where the Janitor asks, "• Behold, we 
have forsaken all, and followed thee ; what shall we have there- 
fore?" and in a humorous strain of contemptuous remark, 
exhibit the selfishness of the (in mind) vulgar fisherman who, 
having left a A\Tetched and precarious calling, seeks to make of 
this a merit, and to demand a reward for that which could only 
be a merit, as it did not seek to obtain any earthly reward or ad- 
vantage. It ought to be known that many men in these latter 
days, many even from the especial land of cant and notions^ 
used to seek to pick up the crumbs from his mental banquets ; 
and, as these were chiefly weak-minded and superstitious men, 
with a few men of strong heads and minim hearts, which latter 
class are not, however, self-deceived^ he was led, being then 
feeble in health, to assent to their conclusions, seeing that 
between minds like theirs and his giant intellect an impassable 
chasm existed ; in short, for peace' sake he humoured them, 
and for s^onpathy, as he used to say of Cromwell, spoke in the 
language but not in the sense of the canters. 

Charles and Mary Lamb ! what recollections, pleasant and 
painful, do these twin names recall. Well do I remember the 
first time I met this most delightful couple, and the kindness 
with which I was received and greeted by this twin union in 
partition ; now, alas ! for a short time separated. No man 
that I have ever known was so well fitted to attract and engage 
the sympathies, the love, the affectionate regards, and the respect 
of ingenuous natures. To all others his heart was (I will not 
say closed) unresponsive. To you, my dear children, who from 

2 



18 LETTERS, ETC. 

your earliest years have been familiar with his incomings, the 
impression made by the remarkable appearance of this model- 
maji, his kindness, his expressive and pensive face and figure, 
must, and ever will remain ; would that I could even faintly 
shadow out the more admirable qualities of his mind. Utterly 
unlike any or all of his contemporaries, having had his lot cast 
in hard places, he yet by a sweetness, an uncomplainingness 
the very opposite, however, of torpid sorrow or resignation, had 
fashioned for himself a happiness, a well-being peculiarly his 
own. To a soimd mind in a sound body, if we take sound to 
mean robust, my kind and gentle-hearted friend had no claim ; 
but out of his very infirmities had he made delights for himself 
and for aU those who had the unspeakable privilege of his 
intimacy. When I think of this loved and loveable being, and 
of all he has been to me, I am almost tempted to repine at 
that inevitable destiny by which our being is borne onwards ; 
an absurdity than which nothing can be more deplorable, if 
indeed that were not necessary. Often as the recollection of 
that familiar face flits across my memory, and the consciousness 
that I cannot, as heretofore, meet him in his old haunts, or see 
him w^alk in as was his wont frequently, I am tempted to repeat 
his own lines. 

*^ A month or more hatli lie been dead, 
Yet cannot I by force be led 
To think on him and the wormy bed 

Together. 

*' My sprightly neighbour, gone before 
To that unknown and silent shore ; 
Shall we not meet as heretofore 

Some summer morning ?'' 

What a beautiful thing is faith, if it would but last for 
ever. 

The following lines from a short poem in the Sibylline 
Leaves, will more vividly impress you, if you should ever be 
able to catch the particular, the very peculiar cadence or 



LETTERS, ETC. 



19 



rhythm, which of right belongs to the poetry of Coleridge ia 
somewhat the same relation as a tune to a song, andrnthout 
which it would not be a song. 



" Yes ! they wander on 



In gladness all ; but thou, methinks, most glad, 

My gentle hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined 

And hungered after Nature many a year, 

In the great city pent, winning thy way 

With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain 

And strange calamity . . . Henceforth I shall know 

That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure ^ 

No plot so narrow, he but Nature there, 

No waste so vacant, but may well employ 

Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart 

Awake to Love and Beauty I and sometimes 

' Tis well to he hereft of promised good^ 

That we may lift the soul and contemplate 

With lively joy y the joys we cannot share. 

My gentle hearted Charles ! when the last rook 

Beat its straight path along the dusky air 

Homewards, I blest it ! deeming, its black wing 

(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light) 

Had crossed the mighty orb's dilated glory, 

While thou stoodst gazing ; or, when all was still, 

Flew creaking o'er thy head, and had a charm 

For thee, my gentle hearted Charles, to whom 

No sound is dissonant that tells of li/e." 

I have said that I never knew any one who at all approached 
or resembled our delightful housemate. I am wrong ; I once 
met a man with his smile, — his smile. There is nothing like 
it upon earth ; unless, perchance, this man smwives. And yet 
how unlike in every other regard personal and mental ; not 
that the man, who had by some most extraordinary means 
acquired or appropriated this sunshine of the face, was at all 
deficient in mental qualities. He seemed amiable, thoughtful, 
and introspective ; a man better than his condition, or rather, 
his calling. He was, I believe, a stock-broker, and had been 



20 

with his son to traverse the haunts of his childhood, near 
Lymington ; with his son, afflicted with a sudden and complete 
deafness ; hence, perchance, these sweet smiles springing from, 
and compounded of, love and pain. Yet this man had never 
known Lamb ; still his smile was the same — the 5eZ/*-same 
expression on a different face, — if, indeed, whilst that smile 
passed over it, you could see any difference. I mentioned this 
strange encounter to Coleridge, and he immediately constructed 
a most delightful theory of association, and corroborated it 
with so many instances, that he must have been sceptical that 
could at the moment have refused him credence. To those 
who wish to see the only thing left on earth, if it is still left^ 
of Lamb, his best and most beautiful remain, — his smile, I 
will indicate its possessor, — Mr. Harman, of Throgmorton 
Street. 

Subjoined is a tribute of love and admiration from one least 
fitted by genius and intellectual sympathies to appreciate the 
loved being so much deplored. If, to this disciple of the useful 
and the prudent. Lamb appeared so worthy of homage, judge 
you what he was to me, and to a herd, each more worthy than 
I. If by a Scotchman, with whom as a nation and as indi- 
viduals he acknowledged no sympathy, he was esteemed and 
reverenced, think what must be the loss to those better fitted, 
by position and by sympathy, to relish and enter into his 
opinions and pursuits. Contrast this tribute, forced as it were, 
from strange lips, with the reminiscences of one on whom all 
his kindness and self-devotion were lavished, and upon whom 
his charities both of mind and purse were poured out even to 
self-sacrifice, and then bear in mind that gratitude is a feeble 
flame, which needs constantly to be kept alive by a repetition 
of benefits, or that in improvident natures it gives place to 
rancorous disparagement, even after death. 

'' One of the conductors of this journal did justice to a long- 
cherished and deeply-rooted admiration of this writer, by making a 
kind of pilgrimage to his house at Edmonton, where a letter from a 



LETTERS, ETC. 21 

mutual friend introduced him to the presence of one whom he would 
willingly have gone ten times farther to see. All stranger as he was^ 
he had the gratification of experiencing a share — and he thought it a 
large one — of that kindness which Mr. Lamb had in store for all his 
fellow- creatures ; and, after an hour's conversation, parted with the 
object of his journey near the famed ' Bell,' carrying with him a pro- 
found sense of the excellence of one of the finest model-beings whom it 
ever was his fortune to meet.^* — Chambers^ Journal, 



LETTER VII. 

My dear Friend, Highgatej April lOth, 1820. 

May I venture to obtrude on you what I cannot intrust to 
a messenger, much less to the post. Sackville- street is not I 
hope more than fifteen or twenty minutes' w^alk from yom* 
house. It is to inquire if Mr. Caldwell is in town ; if he be, 
then to leave the letter, and that is all ; but if not, to learn 
whether he is at his living, and if so, then to transfer his 
present address to the letter, and put it into the nearest Gene- 
ral Post Office box. It is of serious importance to Derwent 
that the inclosed should reach Mr. CaldweU with as little delay 
as possible, or I need not say that I should not have taxed 
your time and kindness merely to make a letter-carrier of 
you. 

On Saturday evening I received a note from Mathews, which 
I have inclosed. I took it very kind of him ; but to obtrude 
myself on Walter Scott, nolentem volentem, and within a 
furlong of my own abode, as he knows (for Mr. Frere told him 
my address), was a Kberty I had no right to take ; and though 
it would have highly gratified me to have conversed with a 
brother bard, and to have renewed on the mental retina the 
image of, perhaps, the most extraordinary man, assuredly the 
most extraordinary writer, of his age, yet I dared not purchase 



22 LETTERS, ETC. 

the gratification at so high a price as that of risking the 
respect which I trust has not hitherto been forfeited by, 

My dear friend, 
Your obliged and very affectionate friend, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

P.S. I had not the least expectation, yet I could not suppress 
a sort of fluttering hope, that my letter might have reached you 
on Saturday night, and that you might be disengaged and turn 
your walk Highgate-ward. You will be delighted with the 
affectionate attachment of the two brothers to each other, the 
boyish high spirits with manly independence of intellect, and, 
in one word, with the simplicity which is their natm-e, and the 
common ground on which the differences of their mind and 
characters (for no two can be more distinct) shoot and play. 
When I say that nothing can exceed their fondness for their 
father, I need not add that they are impatient to be introduced 
to you. And I can offer no better testimony of the rank you 
hold in my bosom, my dear Allsop, than the gladness with 
which I anticipate their becoming j owe friends ^ in the noblest 
sense of the word. Would to Heaven their dear sister were 
with us, the cup of paternal joy would be full to the brim 1 The 
rapture with which both Hartley and Derwent tpJk of her, 
quite affects Mrs. Gillman, who has always felt with a sort of 
lofty yet refined enthusiasm respecting the relations of an only 
sister to her brothers. Of all women I ever knew, Mrs. G. is 
the woman who seems to have been framed by Nature for a 
heroine in that rare species of love which subsists in a tri- 
unity of the heart, the moral sense, and the faculty, correspond- 
ing to what Spurzheim calls the organ of ideality. What in 
other women is refinement exists in her as by implication, and, 
a fortiori^ in d^ miiYQ fineness of character. She often repre- 
sents to my mind the best parts of the Spanish Santa Teresa, 
ladyhood of nature. 

Vexation ! and Mrs. Gillman has this moment burnt 



LETTERS, ETC. 23 

Mathews' note. The piu-poii:, however, was as follows : — '^ I 
have just received a note from Teny, infoiTaing me that Sir 
Walter Scott will call upon me to-morrow morning 'L e. Sunday) 
at half-past eleven. Will you contrive to be here at the same 
time? Perhaps the promise of your company may induce Sir 
Walter to appoint a day on which he T^ill dine with me before 
heretmTLs to the north.'' 

Now as Scott had asked Tenw for my addi-ess on his first 
arrival in town, it is not impossiUe, though not very probable, 
that Teny may have said, — *'^ You will meet Coleridge at 
Mathews's/' though I was not entitled to presume this. The 
bottom of all this, my dear friend, is neither more nor less than 
as follows : — I seem to feel that I ought to feel more desire to 
see an extraordinary man than than I really do feel ; and I do 
not wish to- appear to two or three persons (as the Mr. Freres, 
Wilham Rose, &c.), as if I cherished any dislike to Scott 
respecting the Chnstahel, and generally an increasing dislike 
to appear out of the common and natural mode of thinking 
and acting. All this is, I own, sad weakness, but I am weary 
of di/spathi/. 



In this last sentence may be read the whole secret of the 
writer's latter days. In thought^ action, opinion, he always 
sought for haiinony and agreement, and fi'equently created a 
harmony of his own. Hence his dislike of, and distaste for, 
the new sciences, so called^ of Pohtical Economy and the 
Utilitarian Philosophy, in which nothing is proved, nothing 
settled, and with respect to the very elements of which no two 
professors are agreed. When one of the self-sufficient of this 
last class, now so numerous as to infest, beset, and defile aU 
places of pubhc resort where anything is to be obtained, was 
controverting one of the more profoimd opinions of Coleridge, 
upon which he had brought to bear, hut 'not exhausted, all the 
stores of a mind perfectly unequalled, both with respect to 



24 

the mass of knowledge, — nay more, true wisdom, — and tlie 
eloquence with which that knowledge was adorned, and assert- 
ing, in opposition to views, to the comprehension of the least 
of which his mechanical mind was unequal, that the tendency 
of public opinion and the state of things was in another direc- 
tion, Coleridge, taking up the down of a thistle which lay by 
the road side, and holding it up, said, after observing the direc- 
tion in which it was born by the wind, — " The tendency of 
that thistle is towards China, but I know with assured cer- 
tainty that it will never get there ; nay, that it is more than 
probable that, after sundry eddyings and gyrations up and 
down, backwards and forwards, that it will be found some- 
where near the place in which it grew." Then, turning to 
me, — " I refer to your experience, if you ever knew the pro- 
babilities, the suppositions of an}^ man or set of men, realised 
in their main features, permanently. No ! no ! Hence, such 
institutions as poor laws have never answered, never can 
answer, unless the framers could compel society to remain in 
the same state as when these laws or regulations were made, 
which is a manifest absurdity. It was not the barbarism of 
our forefathers, as is so complacently taken for granted, but 
the flux and change of events which unfit all laws for after- 
times. Bishop Berkely, in his imaginary travels, shows very 
ingeniously the evil of all laws ; and I have no doubt that the 
time will arrive when all penal laws will be held to be bar- 
barous, and proofs of the barbarism of this and all antecedent 
ages.'' 



LETTER VIII. 

My dear Friend, Highgale^ April Sth, 1820. 

It is not the least advantage of friendship, that by com 
municating our thoughts to another, we render them distinct 
to ourselves, and reduce the subjects of our sorrow and anxiety 
to their just magnitude for our own contemplation. 



LETTERS, ETC. ' 25 

As long as we Inly brood over a misfortune (there being no 
divisions or separate circumscriptions in things of mind, no 
proper beginning nor ending to any thought, on the one hand ; 
and, on the other, the confluence of our recollections being 
determined far more by sameness or similarity of the feelings 
that have been produced by them, than by any positive resem- 
blance or connection between the things themselves that are 
thus recalled to our attention) we establish a centre, as it were, 
a sort of nucleus in the reservoir of the soul ; and toward this, 
needle shoots after needle, cluster points on cluster points, from 
all parts of contained fluid, and in all directions, till the mind 
with its best faculties is locked up in one ungenial frost. I 
cannot adequately express the state of feeling in which I wrote 
my last letter ; the letter itself, I doubt not, bore evidence of 
its nest and mode of incubation, as certain birds and lizards 
drag along with them part of the egg-shells from which they 
had forced their way. Still one good end was answered. I 
had made a clearance, so far as to have my head in light and 
my eyes open ; and your answer, every way worthy of you, 
has removed the rest. 

But before I enter on this subject, permit me to refer to some 
points of comparative indifference, lest I should forget them 
altogether. I occasioned you to misconceive me respecting 
Sir Walter Scott. My purpose was to bring proofs of the 
energetic or inenergetic state of the minds of men, induced by 
the excess and unintermitted action of stimulating events and 
circumstances, — revolutions, battles, newspapers^ mobs, sedi- 
tion and treason trials, public harangues, meetings, dinners; 
the necessity in every individual of ever increasing activity 
and anxiety in the improvement of his estate, trade, &c., in 
proportion to the decrease of the actual value of money, to the 
multiplication of competitors, and to the almost compulsory 
expedience of expense, and prominence, even as the means of 
obtaining or retaining competence; the consequent craving 
after amusement as proper relaxation^ as rest freed from the 



28 LETTERS, ETC. 

tedium of vacancy ; and, again, after such knowledge and 
such acquirements as are ready coin^ that will pass at once, 
un weighed and unassayed ; to the unexampled facilities 
afforded for this end by reviews, magazines, &c., &c. The 
theatres, to which few go to see a play ^ but to see Master Betty 
or Mr. Kean, or some one individual in some one part : and the 
single fact that our neighbour, Mathews, has taken more, night 
after night, than both the regular theatres conjointly, and when 
the best comedies or whole plays have been acted at each 
house, and those by excellent comedians, would have yielded a 
striking instance, and illustration of my position. But I chose 
an example in literature, as more in point for the subject of my 
particular remarks, and because every man of genius, who is 
born for his age, and capable of acting immediately and widely 
on that age, must of necessity reflect the age in the first instance, 
though as far as he is a man of genius, he will doubtless be 
himself reflected by it reciprocally. ISTow I selected Scott for 
the very reason, that I do hold him for a man of very extra- 
ordinary powers ; and when I say that I have read the far 
greater part of his novels twice, and several three times over, 
with undiminished pleasure and interest; and that, in ray 
reprobation of the Bride of Lammerraoor (w^ith the exception, 
however, of the almost Shakspearian old witch-wives at the 
funeral) and of the Ivanhoe, I mean to imply the grounds of 
my admiration of the others, and the permanent natm^e of the 
interest which they excite. In a word, I am far from thinking 
that Old Mortality or Guy Mannering would have been less 
admired in the age of Sterne, Fielding, and Eichardson, than 
they are in the present times ; but only that Sterne, &c., would 
not have had the same immediate popularity in the present day 
as in their own less stimulated and, therefore, less languid 
reading world. 

Of Sir Walter Scott's poems I cannot speak so highly, still 
less of the Poetry in his Poems; though even in these the 
power of presenting the most numerous figm^es, and figures 



LETTEKS, ETC. 27 

with the most complex movement?, and under rapid succession, 
in true picturesque unity^ attests true and peculiar genius. You 
cannot imagine with how much pain I used, many years ago, 

to hear 's contemptuous assertions respecting S^ott; 

and if I mistake not, I have yet the fragments of the rough 
draft of a letter wi'itten by me so long ago as my first lectm^es 
at the London Philosophical Society, Fetter Lane, and on the 
backs of the unused admission tickets. 

One more remark. My criticism was confined to the one 
point of the higher degi^ee of intellectual activity implied in the 
reading and admiration of Fielding. Pdchardson. and Sterne : — 
in moral, or, if that be too high and inwardly a word, in man- 
nerly manliness of taste the present age and its test writers 
have the decided advantage, and I sincerely trust that Vfalter 
Scott's readers would be as little disposed to relish the stupid 
lechery of the courtship of W^idow Wadman, as Scott himself 
would be capable of presenting it. And. that though I cannot 
pretend to have found in any of these novels a character that 
even approaches in genius, in truth of conception, or boklness 
and freshness of execution, to Parson Adams, Blifil, Strap, 
Lieutenant Bowling, Mr. Shandy, L'ncle Toby and Trim, and 
Lovelace ; and though Scott's female characters will not, even 
the very best, bear a comparison with Miss Bp'on, Clementina 
Emily, in Sir Charles Grandison : nor the comic ones with 
Tabitha Bramble, or with Betty (in Mrs. Bennet's Beggar 
Girl) ; and though, by the use of the Scotch dialect, by Ossianic 
mock-highland motley-heroic, and by extracts from the printed 
sermons, memoirs, &c., of the fanatic preachers, there is a good 
deal oi false effect and stage trick : still the ninnber of cha- 
racters so good produced by one man, and in so rapid a suc- 
cession, must ever remain an illustrious phenomenon in literatiu'e, 
after all the subtractions for those borrowed from English and 
German sotu'ces, or compoimded by blending two or thre^ of 
the old drama into one — ex. gr, the Caleb in the Bride of 
Lammermoor. 



28 LETTERS, ETC. 

Scott^s great merit, and, at the same time, his felicity^ and 
the true solution of the long-sustained iitterest novel after 
novel excited, lie in the nature of the subject ; not merely, or 
even chiefly, because the struggle between the Stuarts and the 
Presbyterians and sectaries, is still in lively memory, and the 
passions of the adherency to the former, if not the adherency 
itself, extant in our own fathers' or grandfathers' times ; nor 
yet (though this is of great weight) because the language, 
manners, &c., introduced are sufficiently different from our own 
for poignancy^ and yet sufficiently near and similar for sym- 
pathy ; nor yet because, for the same reason, the author, 
speaking, reflecting, and descanting in his own person, remains 
still (to adopt a painter's phrase) in sufficient keeping with 
his subject matter, while his characters can both talk and feel 
interesting to us as men, without recourse to antiquarian 
interest, and nevertheless without moral anachronism (in all 
which points the Ivanhoe is so wofully the contrary, for what 
Englishman cares for Saxon or Norman, both brutal invaders, 
more than for Chinese and Cochin- Chinese ?) — yet great as 
all these causes are, the essential wisdom and happiness of the 
subject consists in this, — that the contest between the loyalists 
and their opponents can never be obsolete^ for it is the contest 
between the two great moving principles of social humanity ; 
religious adherence to the past and the ancient, the desire and 
the admiration of permanence, on the one hand ; and the 
passion for increase of knowledge, for truth, as the offspring 
of reason — in short, the mighty instincts of progression and 
free agency^ on the other. In all subjects of deep and lasting 
interest, you will detect a struggle between two opposites, two 
polar forces, both of which are alike necessary to our human 
well-being, and necessary each to the continued existence of 
the other. Well, therefore, may we contemplate with intense 
feelings those whirlwinds which are for free agents the 
appointed means, and the only possible condition of that equi- 
librium in which our moral Being subsists ; while the 



LETTERS, ETC. 29 

disturbance of the same constitutes our sense of life. Thus 
in the ancient Tragedy, the lofty struggle between irresistible 
fate and unconquerable free will, which finds its equilibrium 
in the Providence and the futm-e retribution of Christianity. 
If, instead of a contest between Saxons and Xormans, or the 
Fantees and Ashantees, — a mere contest of indifferents ! of 
minim surges in a boiling fish-kettle, — Walter Scott had taken 
the struggle between the men of arts and the men of arms in 
the time of Becket, and made us feel how much to claim our 
well-wishing there was in the cause and character of the 
priestly and papal party, no less than in those of Henry and 
his knights, he would have opened a new mine, instead of 
translating into Leadenhall Street Minerva Library sentences, 
a cento of the most common incidents of the stately self-con- 
gruous romances of D'Ui'fe, Scuderi, &c. i^.B. I have not 
read the Monastery, but I suspect that the thought or element 
of the faery work is from the German. I perceive from that 
passage in the Old Mortality, w^here Morton is discovered by 
old Alice in consequence of calling his dog Elphin, that 
Walter Scott has been reading Tieck's Phantasies (a collection 
of faery or witch tales), from which both the incident and 
name is borrowed. 

1 forget whether I ever mentioned to you, that some 
eighteen months ago I had planned and half collected, half 
manufactured and invented a work, to be entitled The Weather- 
BOUND Traveller ; or. Histories, Lays, Legends, Incidents, 
Anecdotes, and Eemarks, contributed during a detention in 
one of the Hebrides, recorded by their Secretary, Lory 
McHaroldson, Senachy in the Isle of . 

The principle of the work I had thus expressed in the first 
chapter : — '^ Though not /ac?, must it needs be false ? These 
thino:3 have a truth of their own, if we but knew how to look 
for it. There is a humanity (meaning by this word w^hatever 
contradistinguishes man), there is a humanity common to aU 
periods of life, which each period from childhood has its own 



30 LETTERS, ETC. 

way of representing. Hence, in whatever laid firm hold of us 
in early life, there lurks an interest and a charm for our 
maturest years, but which he will never draw forth, who, con- 
tent with mimicking the unessential, though natural defects of 
thought and expression, has not the skill to remove the 
childish^ yet leave the childlike untouched. Let each of us 
then relate that which has left the deepest impression on his 
mind, at whatever period of his life he may have seen, heard, 
or read it ; but let him tell it in accordance with the present 
state of his intellect and feelings, even as he has, perhaps 
(Alnaschar-like), acted it over again by the parlour fire-side of 
a rustic inn, with the fire and the candles for his only com- 
panions.'' 

On the hope of my Lectures answering, I had intended to 
have done this work out of hand, dedicating the most genial 
hours to the completion of Christabel, in the belief that in the 
former I should be rekindKng the feeling, and recalling the 
state of mind, suitable to the latter. — But the Hope was vain. 

In stating the names and probable size of my works, I by 
no means meant any reference to the m^ode of their publica- 
tion ; I merely wished to commimicate to you the amount of 
my labours. In two moderate volumes it was my intention to 
comprise all those more prominent and systematic parts of my 
lucubrations on Shakspeare as should be pubKshed (in the first 
instance at least, in the form of books), and having selected and 
arranged them, to send the more particular illustrations and 
analysis to some respectable magazine. In like manner, I pro- 
posed to include the philosophical critiques on Dante, Milton, 
Cervantes, &c., in a series of Letters entitled The Keviewer 
in Exile, or Critic confined to an Old Library. Provided the 
truths (which are, I dare affirm, original, and all tending to the 
same principles, and proving the endless fertility of true prin- 
ciple, and the decision and power of growth which it commu- 
nicates to all the faculties of the mind) are but in existence, 
and to be read by such as might wish to read, I have no choice 



LETTERS, ETC. 31 

as to the mode ; nay, I slioiild prefer that mode which most 
multiplied the chances. — So too as to the order. — For many 
reasons, it had been my wish to commence with the Theolo- 
gical Letters : one, and not the least, is the strong desire I 
have to put you and Hartley and Derwent Coleridge in full 
possession of my w^hole Christian creed, with the grounds of 
reason and authority on w^hich it rests ; but especially to 
unfold the true " glorious liberty of the Gospel,'' by showing 
the distinction betw^een doctrinal faith and its som'ces and his- 
torical belief, with their reciprocal action on each other ; and 
thus, on the one hand, to do away the servile superstition which 
makes men Bibliolators, and 3"et hides from them the proper 
excellences, the one continued revelation of the Bible docu- 
ments, which they idolise ; and, on the other hand, to expose, 
in its native worthlessness, the so-called evidences of Chris- 
tianity first brought into toleration by Arminius, and into 
fashion by Grotius and the Socinian divines : for as such I 
consider all those who preach and teach in the spirit of 
Socinianism, though even in the outward form of a defence 
of the thirty- nine articles. 

I have been interrupted by the arrival of my sons. Hartley 
and Derwent, the latter of whom I had not seen for so dreary 
a time. I promise myself great pleasure in introducing him 
to you. Hartley you have abeady met. Indeed, I am so 
desirous of this, that I will defer what I have to add, that I 
may put this letter in the post, time enough for you to receive 
it this evening ; saying only, that it was not my purpose to 
have had any further communication on the subject but with 
Mr. Frere, and with him only as a counsellor. Let me see 
you as soon as you can and as often. I shall be better able 
hereafter to talk with you than to write to you on the contents 
of your last. 

Your very affectionate friend, 

T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



32 

If it had been possible for the writer of this letter to have 
been both oracle and priest (or rather popular expounder), then 
indeed should we have wanted little (for the present time at 
least) in the way of aids to knowledge in its highest aim and 
tendency. But powers like his have never yet existed in con- 
junction Vvdth familiar and popular elucidation. There was 
nothing shapeless and unmeaning in anything he ever said or 
WTote. There were no crudities, no easy reading in his produc- 
tions. To follow the train of his reasoning demanded at first 
severe and continued attention ; and to this how few of the 
self- called seekers after that knowledge which is truth are equal. 
To him, details were of little value, except as far as they illus- 
trated, proved, a principle ; whilst to the greater part of those 
who latterly became his hearers, they constituted the only part 
of his conversation which was intelligible or of the least in- 
terest. Would that it were possible to recall some of those 
delightful tales w^hich my friend used to relate in his inimitable 
manner, as forming part of the collection existing in his mind 
of the " Weather-bound Traveller." Myself a proficient when 
a youth as a raconteur, I was still sm'prised at the extraordi- 
nary ease with which he produced story after story, each more 
incredible, more mystic, and more abounding with materials for 
future meditation, than the one preceding. Ardently do I hope 
that the fragments above alluded to have been saved, and that 
the worthy and excellent friend to whom they are confided 
will give them to the w^orld as he finds them. 

The allusion to the Socinians may need some explanation. 
Having for a short time, in early youth, been a convert to what 
is now called Unitarianism, through the instrumentality of a 
Mr. Friend, of Cambridge (no friend to him), he had opportu- 
nities of free and unrestrained intercourse and intercom- 
munion with the more influential and distinguished of this sect ; 
and the result was a conviction of the insincerity (conscious or 
otherwise), selfishness, or, as he expressed it, self-centering, and 
want of moral courage, produced by this faith, or, as he again 



LETTERS, ETC. 33 

termed it, tins want of faith. That this was the fact at that 
time, I am willing to admit ; but my owm experience, my own 
knowledgej of many who delight in, or endure this name, leads 
me to the conclusion, that a change has come over their spirit. 
To the charge of want of moral courage they appear as ob- 
noxious now as at any previous period : nay, more — for in the 
earlier period of their history, the very expression of these 
opinions was an act of great moral daring ; w^hilst at this time, 
when toleration is universal, it would be more in unison with 
that universal progression which we see in every other sect and 
party, to find them casting away the small remnant of super- 
stition which they have hitherto retained, out of consideration, 
as it should seem, to the fouler superstitions and mental degra- 
dation by which they are still suiTOunded. 

But my excellent friend had another cause of quarrel mth this 
sect. He saw mth what readiness they received and adopted 
the atrocious, the, in any^ in every sense, hateful opinions 
and views of Malthus and the so called economists ; a sect and 
a class having about as much title to that name (as first gene- 
rally given to Turgot and his associates), as a crab to an apple, 
or a mule to a race-horse. This he attributed to the selfish 
and cold character of minds in which neither imagination nor 
love had a place, and to the restlessness superinduced by the 
absence of those two faculties. To observations as to their 
being the slaves of the circumstances by which they were sur- 
rounded, or to the education which they had received, he 
opposed the fact, that they were all to a great degree sceptical, 
and not therefore passive, recipients of any faith. 

I have thought it fitting and desirable thus to notice, in 
passing, his great dislike to this class, that it may lead to a 
more full and satisfactory elucidation from the pen of his friend 
and biographer. For myself, opposed as I am both from prin- 
ciple and feeling to the plans and practices which this class 
encourages and abets, — a system at once petty in its details and 
mighty in the extent of its application, that tends to a tyranny, 

3 



34 LETTERS, ETC. 

compared with which the cruelties of a Nero and a Caligiila 
were mild and beneficent, — I am desirous and anxious to do 
justice to individuals who adhere from habit to this sect, and 
who thus share in the odium so justly incurred by the more 
restless, and unhappy because restless, of this party. To you 
especially, my dear children, and to the ingenuous youth of this 
age (if, perchance, this mechanical and utilitarian age should 
permit of ingenuous youth), there can be no need to teach or 
preach toleration. If it were necessary to enforce the great 
truth, that opinion is always the result of previous circum- 
stances and influences, not the consequence of any choice or 
will of the individual mind, I should be able with ease to prove 
the necessity of charity ; but this has been made so manifest, 
that I shall content myself with giving in this place a short 
extract from the " Friend ^' in relation to this great truth 

'' For a subdued sobriety of temper, a practical faith in the doctrine 
of pbilosopliical necessity seems the only preparative. That vice is 
the effect of error and the offspring of surrounding circumstances, 
the object therefore of condolence, not of anger, is a proposition easily 
understood and as easily demonstrated. But to make it spread from 
the understanding to the affections, to call it into action, not only in 
the great exertions of patriotism, but in the daily and hourly occur- 
rences of social hfe, requires the most watchful attentions of the most 
energetic mind. 

" It is not enough that we have once swallowed these truths ; we must 
feed on them, as insects on a leaf, till the whole heart be coloured by 
their qualities, and show its food in every the minutest fibre." 

As I have begun to quote, I cannot deny myself the 
gratification of transcribing an admirable passage, in which 
the author feelingly denounces and exposes the attempts of the 
mischievous and heartless meddlers who are now tyrannising 
alike over poor and rich, who, hating all above, are applying 
the power extorted from the aristocracy to purposes to which 
the oligarchy would neither have desired nor dared to apply 
it, — -to the coercion and frightful slavery of the poor. But to 
my quotation : — 



LETTERS, ETC. 35 

"If we hope to instruct others, we should familiarise our own 
minis to soyrq fixed and. determinate principles of action. The world 
is a vast labyrinth, in which almost every one is running a different 
way, and almost every one manifesting hatred to those who do not 
run the same way. A few, indeed, stand motionless, and, not seeking 
to lead themselves or others out of the maze, laugh at the failures of 
their brethren. Yet with little reason ; for more grossly than the 
most bewildered wanderer does Jie err who never aims to go right. It 
is more honourable to the head, as well as to the heart, to be misled 
by our eagerness in the pursuit of truth, than to be safe from blunder- 
ing by contempt of it. The happiness of mankind is the end of 
virtue, and truth is the knowledge of the means, which he will never 
seriously attempt to discover who has not habitual!}^ interested him- 
self in the welfare of others. The searcher after truth must: love and he 
beloved, for general benevolence is a necessary motive to constancy of 
pursuit ; and this general benevolence is begotten and rendered 
permanent by social and domestic affections.. Let us beware of tha^ 
reasoning which affects to inculcate philanthropy, while it denounces 
EVERT HOME-BORN FEELING by luhich it IS produccd and nurtured. 
The paternal and filial duties discipline the heart and prepare it 
for the love of mankind. The intensity of private attachments 
encourages, not prevents, universal benevolence. The nearer we 
approach to the sun the more intense his heat ; yet what corner of 
the system does he not cheer and vivify ? '' 

Well do I recollect the very last conversation I had with. 
my lamented friend. The projected Poor Law Bill was 
mentioned as an instance of the tyranny contemplated by the 
new parliament. He predicted that it would be canned. I 
remember that in allusion to the system of coercive regulation 
which formed part of the bill by v\^hich all relief was denied at 
home, he made the affecting remark, — ''It is not bread alone , 
but the place where you eat itJ^ He then, by a felicitous- 
transition, turned to a beautiful tale of Tieck, in vv^hich there 
is an allusion to the question of pauperism, introduced by an 
affecting story of a beggar in Switzerland, who, being offended 
by a refusal where he had hitherto met ^ith kindness, said, as 
he departed, — '' Well, you will find I shall not come again^ 
and then you may see if you can get another beggar." The 



36 LETTERS, ETC. 

whole is so admirably stated and reasoned, as well as felt, that, 
for the gratification as well as the profit of the ingenuous and 
affectionate natures to whom I address myself, I will extract 
the passage, premising only that the conversation is carried on 
at the table of an old counsellor, between old and young 
Eisenschlicht, Erich an old bachelor, Sophia, the daughter of 
the counsellor, and Edward, her suitor. 

In reading this extract the reader will recognise, in the 
arguments and reasoning of old and young Eisenschlicht, a 
faint resemblance to the bolder daring of Lord Brougham and 
Chad wick, whilst in Edward and Sophia may be recognised a 
noble and high-purposed humanity which, however, has few 
counterparts in any of our public men. 

" * But why,' said Erich to his neighbour, ' are you disgusted with 
most of the works of the Flemish school here ?' 

" ' Because they represent so many tatterdemalions and beggars,' 
answered the rich man. ' Nor are these Netherlanders the sole objects 
of my dislike : I hate particularly that Spaniard Murillo on that 
account, and even a great number of your Italians. It is melancholy 
enough that one cannot escape this vermin in the streets and market- 
places, nay, even in our very houses ; but that an artist should require 
me besides to amuse myself with this noisome crew upon a motley 
canvass is expecting rather too much from my patience.'* 

" ' Perhaps then,' said Edward, ' Quintin Matsys would suit you, 
who so frequently sets before us with such truth and vigour money- 
changers at their couters, with coins and ledgers.' 

*' ' Not so either, young gentleman,' said the old man : ' that we 
can see easily and without exertion in reality. If I am to be enter- 
tained with a painting, I would have stately royal scenes, abundance 
of massy silk stuffs, crowns and purple mantles, pages and black- 
amoors ; that combined with a perspective of palaces and great squares, 
and down broad straight streets, elevates the soul ; it often puts me in 
spirits for a long time, and I am never tired of seeing it over and over 
again.' 

'' ' Undoubtedly,' said Erich, ' Paul Veronese, and several other 
Italians, have done many capital things in this department also.' 

* This man was an economist of the worst kind, without knowing 
anything of political economy. 



37 

" ' What say you to a marriage of Cana in this manner ? ' asked 
Edward. 

"'All eating,' replied the old man, ' grows tiresome in pictures, 
because it never stirs from its place ; and the roast peacocks and high- 
built pasties, as well as the cup-hearers half bent double, are in all 
such representations annoying thing?. But it is a different case when 
they are drawing a little Moses out of the water, and the king's 
daughter is standing by, in her most costly attire, surrounded by 
richly dressed ladies, who might themselves pass for princesses, men 
with halberds and armour, and even dwarfs and dogs : I cannot 
express how delighted I am when I meet with one of these stories, 
which in my youth I was forced to read in the uneasy confinement 
of a gloomy school-room, so gloriously dressed up. But you my dear 
Mr. Walther, have too few things of this sort. Most of your pictures 
are for the feelings, and I never wish to be affected*, and least of all 
by works of art. Nor, indeed, am I ever s-o, but only provoked.' 

" •' Still worse,' began young Eisenschlicht, 'is the case with our 
comedies. When we leave an agreeable company, and, after a bril- 
liant entertainment, step into the lighted theatre, how can it be 
expected that we should interest ourselves in the variety of wretched- 
ness and pitiful distress that is here served up for our amusement ? 
Would it not be possible to adopt the same laudable regulation which 
is established by the police in most cities, to let me subscribe once 
for all for the relief of poverty, and then not be incommoded any 
farther by the tattered and hungry individuals ? ' 

" ' It would be convenient, undoubtedly,' said Edward ; ' but whe- 
ther absolutely laudable, either as a regulation of police, or a maxim 
of art, I am not prepared say. For my own part, I cannot resist a 
feeling of pity towards the individual unfortunates ; and would not 
wish to do so, though to be sure one is often unseasonably disturbed, 
impudently importuned, and sometimes even grossly imposed upon. 

" ' I am of your opinion,' cried Sophia : ' I cannot endure those 
dumb blind books, in which one is to write one's name, in order 
placidly to rely upon an invisible board of management, which is 
to relieve the distress as far as possible. In many places even it is 
desired that the charitable should engage to give nothing to in- 
dividuals. f But how is it possible to resist the sight of woe ? When 
I give to him who complains to me of his distress, I at all events see 
his momentary joy, and may hope to have comforted him.' 

* Just so, 
t Surely H. B, must have read this. 



38 LETTERS, ETC. 

'^ ' This is the very thing,' said the old merchant, ' which in all 
countries maintains mendicity, that we cannot and will not rid our- 
selves of this petty feeling of soft-hearted vanity and mawkish 
philanthropy. This it is, at the same time, that renders the better * 
measures of states abortive and impracticable.' 

" ' You are of a different way of thinking from those Swiss whom I 
have heard of,' said Edward. ' It was in a Catholic canton, where an old 
beggar had long been in the habit of receiving his alms on stated days, 
and as the rustic solitude did not allow much trade and commerce, 
was accounted in almost every house one of the family. It happened, 
however, that once, when he called at a cottage where the inmates 
were extremely busied in attending a woman in labour, in the confusion 
and anxiety for the patient he met with a refusal. When, after 
repeating his request, he really obtained nothing, he turned angrily 
away, and cried as he departed, ' Well, I promise you, y-ou shall find 
I do not come again, and then you may see where you can catch 
another beggar.' 

" All laughed, except Sophia, who would have it the beggar's threat 
was perfectly rational, and concluded with these words : — ' Surely if 
it were put out of our power to perform acts of benevolence, our 
LIFE ITSELF WOULD BECOME POOR ENOUGH. If it wcre possiblc that 
the impulse of pity could die in us, there would ee a melancholy 
PROSPECT FOR OUR JOY AND OUR PLEASURE. The man wJw is fortiinate 
enough to he able to hestow^ receives more than the poor taker. Alas ! it 
is the only thing,^ she added with great emotion, ' that can at all excuse 
and mitigate the harshness op property, the cruelty of possession, 
that a part of what is disproportionately accumidated is dropped upon 
the wretched creatures who are pining below us, that it may not be 
utterly forgotten that we are all brethren, f 

* This is of the very essence of the new blasphemy. This general 
system will be found to require modification in a small parish of fifty 
souls. How can it be enforced throughout a whole nation without 
frightful suffering ?— S. T. C. 

t I know nothing so ludicrous, and at the same time so affecting, 
as this little incident and the after remarks of Sophia. The very 
essence of femineity seems to speak in the few and delicate, yet true 
and touching words. I am not ashamed to say that when I first read 
them the tears came into my eyes, and often, as I have read them 
since to others, I cannot refrain from praying inwardly that the 
time may be far distant when such sentiments shall be scouted by our 
women.— S. T. C. 



LETTERS, ETC. 39 

*' The father looked at her with a disapproving air, and was on the 
point of saying something, when Edward, his beaming eyes fixed on 
the moist eyes of the maid, interposed with vehemence; 'If the 
majority of mankind were of the same way of thinking, we should 
live in a different and a better world. We are struck with horror 
when we read of the distress that awaits the innocent traveller in 
wildernesses and deserts of foreign climes, or of the terrible fate 
which wastes a ship's crew on the inhospitable sea, when, in their 
sorest need, no vessel or no coast will appear on the immeasurable 
expanse ; we are stru.ck with horror when monsters of the deep tear 
to pieces the unfortunate mariner ; — and yet, do we not live in great 
cities y as upon the peak of a promontory^ where immediately at our feet 
all this woe, the same horrible spectacle displays itself, only 
MORE SLOWLY, and THEREFORE tlie more cruelly ?* But, from the 
midst of our concerts and banquets, and from the safe hold of our 
opulence, we look down into this abyss, where the shapes of miseryf 
are tortured and wasted in a thousand fearful groups, as in Dante's 
imagery, and do not venture even to raise their eyes to us, 
because they know what a cold look they meet, when their cry rou.ses 
us at times out of the torpor of our cold apathy.' 

*' ' These,' said the elder Eisenschlicht, ' are youthful exaggerations. 
I still maintain, the really good citizen, the genuine patriot, ought not 
to suffer himself to be urged by a momentary emotion to support 
beggary. Let him bestow on those charitable institutions as much as 
he can conveniently spare ; but let him not waste his slight means, 
which ought in this respect also to be subseiwient to the higher views 
of the state. For, in the opposite case, what is it he does? He 
promotes by his weakness — nay, I should be inclined to call it a 
voluptuou-S itching of the heart — imposture, laziness, and impudence, 
and withdraws his little contribution from real poverty, which, after 
all, he cannot always meet with or discern. Should we, however, be 
willing to acknowledge that overcharged picture of wretchedness to 
be correct, what good, even in this case, can a single individual effect? 
Is it in his power to improve the condition of the wretch who is 

* Say selfishness, for the opulent have not a monopoly of cruelty. 

t Say rather the punishments the selfish seek to inflict upon those 
by and through whom they have the opportunity of punishing. All 
men might be improvident, and all would be better if all were lavish, 
profuse, generous. It would not be possible for all to be selfish and 
grasping.— S. T. C. 



40 LETTEKS, ETC. 

driven to despair ? What does it avail to give relief for a single day 
or hour ? The unfortunate being will only feel his misery the more 
deeply, if he cannot change his state into a happy one ; he will grow 
still more dissatisfied, still more wretched, and I injure instead of 
benefiting him.' 

" ' Oh ! do not say so,' exclaimed Edward, ' if you would not have 
me think harshly of you, for it sounds to me like blasphemy. What 
the poor man gains in such a moment of sunshine! Oh! sir, he who is 
accustomed to he thrust out of the society of men; he, for whom there 
is no holiday, no marhet-place, no society, and scarcely a church ; for 
whom ceremony, courtesy, and all the attentions which every man 
usually pays to his neighbour, are extinct ; this wretched creature, 
for whom, in puhlic walks and vernal nature, there shoots and blossoms 
nothing hut contempt, often turns his dry eye to heaven and the stars 
above him, and sees there even, nothing but vacancy and doubts ; hut 
in such an hour as that wJiich unexpectedly hestows on him a more liheral 
boon, and enables him to return to his gloomy hovel, to cheer his 
pining family with more than momentary comfort, faith in God, in his 
father, again rises in his heart, he hecomes once more a man, he feels 
again the neighbourhood of a brother, and can again love him and him^ 
self. Happy the rich man, ivho can promote this faith, who can bestow 
with the visible the invisible gift ; and ivoe to the prodigal, who, tJirough 
his criminal thoughtlessness, deprives himself of those means of being a 
man among men ; for most severely will his feelings punish him, foT 
having 'poured out in streams in the wilderness, like a heartless barbarian^ 
the refreshing draught, of which a single drop might have cheered his 
brother, who lay drooping under the load of his wearisome existence.'' He 
could not utter the last words without a tear ; he covered his face, 
and did not observe that the strangers and Erich had taken leave of 
their host. Sophia too wept ; but she roused herself and recovered 
her composure as her father returned." 



LETTEE IX. 

My very dear Friend, 31st JuIt/^ 1820. 

Before I opened your letter, or rather before I gave it to 

my best sister, and, under God, best comforter, to open, a heavy, 

a very heavy affliction came upon me with all the aggravations 



LETTERS, ETC. 41 

of surprise, sudden as a peal of thunder from a cloudless 
sky.* 



Alas ! both Mr. and Mrs. Gillman had spoken to him with 
all the earnestness of the fondest parents; his cousins had 
warned him, and I (long ago) had m^itten to him, conjimng 
him to reflect with what a poisoned dagger it would arm my 
enemies : yea, and the phantoms that, }idXi.-counterfeiting^ half- 
expounding the conscience, would persecute my sleep. My 
conscience indeed bears me witness, that from the time I 
quitted Cambridge, no human being was more indifferent to 
the pleasures of the table than myself, or less needed any 
stimulation to my spirits ; and that by a most unhappy 
quackery, after having been almost bedrid for six months with 
swollen knees and other distressing symptoms of disordered 
digestive functions, and through that most pernicious form of 
ignorance, medical half-knowledge, I was seduced into the use 
of narcotics, not secretly, but (such was my ignorance) openly 
and exultingly, as one who had discovered, and was never 
weary of recommending, a grand panacea, and saw not the 
truth till my body had contracted a habit and a necessity ; and 
that, even to the latest, my responsibility is for cowardice and 
defect of fortitude, not for the least craving after gratification 
or pleasurable sensation of any sort, but for yielding to pain, 
terror, and haunting bewilderment. But this I say to man 
only, who knows only what has been yielded not what has been 

* Here follows a detail of charges brought against one very near, 
and deservedly dear, to tlie writer, originating with, or adopted by 
the present Bishop of Llandaff. These charges were afterwards, I 
believe, withdrawn ; at all events compensation was tendered to the 
party implicated. 



42 LETTERS, ETC. 

resisted ; before God I have but one voice — " Mercy ! mercy ! 
woe is me.'' — This was the sin of his natm^e, and this has been 
fostered by the culpable indulgence, at least non-interference, 
on my part ; while^ in a different quarter, contempt of the self- 
interest he saw seduced him unconsciously into selfishness. 

Pray for me, my dear friend, that I may not pass such 
another night as the last. While I am awake and retain my 
reasoning powers, the pang is gnawing, but I am, except for a 
fitful moment or two, tranquil ; it is the howling wilderness of 
sleep that I dread. 

I am most reluctant thus to transplant the thorns from 
my own pillow to yours, but sooner or later you must know it, 
and how else could I explain to you the incapability I am under 
of answering your letter ? For the present (my late visitation 
and sorrow out of the question) my anxiety is respecting your 
health. Mr. Gillm^an feels satisfied that there is nothing in 
your case symptomatic of aught more dangerous than irritable, 
and at present disordered, organs of digestion, requiring indeed 
great care, but by no means incompatible with comfortable 
health on the whole. Would to God ! that your imcle lived 
near Highgate, or that we were settled near Clapham. Most 
anxious am I — (for I am sure I do not overvdXQ Gillman's 
medical skill and sound medical good sense, and I have had 
every possible opportunity of satisfying myself on this head, 
comparatively as well as positively, from my intimate acquaint- 
ance with so many medical men in the course of my life) — I 
am most anxious that you should not apply to any medical 
practitioner at Clapham, till you have consulted some physician 
recommended by Gillman, and with whom our friend might 
have some confidential conversation. — The next earnest petition 
I make to you, — for should I lose you from this world, I fear 
that religious terrors would shake my strength of mind, and to 
how many are you, must you be, very dear, — is that you 
would stay in the country as long as is morally practicable. 
Let nothing but coercive motives have weight with you; a 



LETTERS, ETC. 43 

month's tranquillity in pure air (O! that I could spend that 
month with you, v/ith no greater efforts of mental or bodily 
exercise than woLild exhilarate both body and mind) might save 
you many months' interrupted and half-effective labour. 

If any thoughts occur to you at Clapham on which it would 
amuse or gratify you to have my notions, write to me, and 1 
shall be served by having something to think and write about 
not connected with myself. But, at all events, write as often 
as you can, and as much as (but not a syllable m.ore than) you 
ought. Need I say how unspeakably dear you are to your, 
you must not refuse me to say in hearty 

S. T. Coleridge, 
T. Allsop, Esq. 



This letter, interesting as it is to me from the recollections 
and associations of those delightful days, when its writer was 
to me a guide, philosopher, and, above and before all, a dear, 
very dear, and valued friend, has an interest and a value from 
the clear and simple account of his first using laudanum. If 
any other testimony were or could be needed, I have received 
ample confirmation from subsequent communications. From 
this bodily slavery i^for it was bodily) to a baneful drug, he 
was never entirely free, though the quantity was so greatly 
reduced as not materially to affect his health or spirits. For 
this alleviation he was indebted to the skill and attention of the 
medical friend of whom mention is made above, who, in a 
calling which, as ^i present pursued, tends more than perhaps 
any other trade^ to degrade the moral being, has preserved a 
simplicity and singleness of purpose, united to a manly frank- 
ness, and combined with, or rather springing out of, a kindness 
and disinterestedness, which, as far as I have seen, has few 
equals. This excellent man seems to realise, in suburban 
practice, the example given in the following extract from the 
conversations of Coleridge : — 

" The functions of a simple, earnest, and skilful country 



44 



LETTERS, ETC. 



surgeon, living in a small town or village, and circulating in a 
radius of ten miles, are, and might always be made, superior in 
real, urgent, instant, and fitting relief, to the Lady Bountiful, and 
even to that of the Parson of the parish. I often think with 
pleasure of the active practical benevolence of Salter.* His 
rides were often sixty, averaging more than thirty miles, every 
day, over bad roads and in dark nights ; yet not once has he 
been known to refuse a summons, though quite sure that he 
would receive no remuneration, nay, not sure that it would not 
be necessary to supply wine or cordials, which, in the absence 
of the landlord of his village, must be at his own expense. 
This man was generally pitied by the affluent and the idle, on 
the score of his constant labours, and the drudgery which he 
almost seemed to court. Yet with little reason : for never 
knew I the man more to be envied, one more cheerful, more 
invariably kind, or more patient : always kind from real kind- 
ness and delicacy of feeling ; never, even for a moment, angr}^. 
The present system of money-making, and, what is worse, 
sleight of hand, and other tricks for ostentation and stage effect, 
leave little hope of futm^e Salters/' 

As I have extracted a part, I will even give the remainder 
of the conversation of the day ; one of those — alas ! too few — 
which I have preserved at great length. Bitterly do \ now 
regret, both for my o^vn sake, and still more for yours, my dear 
children and youthful readers (for such chiefly do I wish), that 
a contempt for the character and piu'suits of Boswell deterred 
me from making constant memorandums of conversations, 
which spread over a period of seventeen years, and, for a part 
of that time, almost daily, would now to me have been a 
treasure and a consolation unspeakable, in the dear and delight- 
ful recollections which they would have contained. These 
recollections, which are now so misty, so shadowy, and so 

* Salter, if I recollect right, lived in Devonshire ; but whether at 
Ottery or in its neighbourhood, I am ignorant. 



LETTERS, ETC. 45 

unsubstantial, as to present little tliat is tangible, little tliat 
can be recalled bodily, would not be the less delightful to me 
as harmonising witli tlie general character of my mind, if they 
did not also include regret the most poignant at the oppor- 
tunities that I suffered to pass unimproved. 

It may seem a contradiction, but I am never more grateful, 
never more thankful for the communion vouchsafed, never 
more revere the memory of the illustrious departed, than when 
I am compelled to come to conclusions directly opposed to 
those of the great teacher himself. 

I have not observed the transitions from one subject to 
another ; indeed, this was not possible without giving the 
whole conversation, with the remarks and observations of 
others — a com\se quite out of the question, seeing that each 
conversation would make a small volume ; a volume, I may 
add, of great and most delightful interest throughout. 



^^ I believe that processes of thought might be carried on 
independent and apart from spoken or written language. I do 
not in the least doubt, that if language had been denied or 
withheld from man, or that he had not discovered and improved 
that mode of intercommunication, thought, as thought would 
have been a process more simple, more easy, and more perfect 
than at present, and would both have included and evolved 
other and better means for its own manifestations, than any 
that exist now.'' 



" A clergyman has even more influence with the women 
than the handsome captain. The captain will captivate the 
fancy, whilst the young parson seizes upon the imagination, 
and subdues it to his service. The captain is conscious of his 
advantages, and sees the impression he has made long before 
his victim suspects the reality of any preference. The parson, 
unless he be the vain fop, for which, however, his education 



46 LETTERS, ETC. 

essentially unfits him, has often secured to himself the imagi- 
nation, and, through the imagination, the best affections of 
those amongst whom he lives, before he is seriously attached 
himself/' 



" Hark yet again to that sweet strain ! See how calm, how 
beauteous that prospect toward my garden ! (thus he used 
sportively to call the demesne of Caen Wood, and its honest, 
though unreasoning owner, his head gardener). Would to 
God I could give out my being amidst flowers, and the sight 
of meadowy fields, and the chaunt of birds. Death without 
pain at such a time, in such a place as this, would be a reward 
for life. If I fear at all, I fear dying — I do not fear death." 



" No, no ; Lamb's scepticism has not come lightly, nor is he 
a sceptic. The harsh reproof to Godwin for his contemptuous 
allusion to Christ before a well-trained child, proves that he 
is not a sceptic. His' mind, never prone to analysis, seems to 
have been disgusted with the hollow pretences, the false 
reasonings, and absm^dities of the rogues and fools with which 
all establishments, and all creeds seeking to become estabhshed, 
abound. I look upon Lamb as one hovering between earth 
and heaven ; neither hoping much nor fearing anything. 

" It is curious that he should retain many usages which he 
learnt or adopted in the fervour of his early religious feelings, 
now that his faith is in a state of suspended animation. 
Believe me, who know him well, that Lamb, say what he will, 
has more of the essentials of Christianity than ninety-nine out 
of a hundred professing Christians. He has all that would 
still have been Christian had Christ never lived or been made 
manifest upon earth."* 

* It will be interesting to compare Lamb's estimate of the belief of 
Coleridge — half serious, half sportive — with this defence of Lamb 
from the charge of scepticism. After a visit to Coleridge, during 



LETTERS; ETC. 47 

" i deprecate a Kteral still more than an ideal religion. The 
miracles may he fairly illustrated hv the familiar example of a 
lectm'e ^^ith experiments at the institution. A man ignorant 
of the lavv^ whence these conjurations proceeded would he acted 
upon in a very different manner, when compared with the 
philosopher who, famihar with the law, or the principle 
whence they emanate, and with which they are congruous, sees 
in them only the natm-al results, hardly the confirmation of 
that which had pre^^lously been kno^n. Compare this with 
the no-results obtained from meteorology, a science so misnamed, 
which so far from being in its infancy is not yet in its fetal 
state. The meteorological joimials ai'e as little to be rehed 
upon, as would be the account of a ploughman, taken to an 
experimental lecture at the institution. Ignorant of the law 
and the principle, he would give an account of the results^ so 
different from the actual /acz'^, that no one could conjecture a 
law from las evidence. So with the miracles. They are super- 
erogatory. The lav/ of God and the gTcat principles of the 
Christian religion would have been the same had Christ never 
assumed humanity. It is for these things, and for such as ._ 
these, for telling unwelcome tiniths, that I have been termed 
an atheist. It is for these opinions that William Smith assured 
the Archbishop of Canterbmy that I was (what half the clergy 
are in their lives) an atheist. Little do these men know what 
atheism is. Xot one man in a thousand has either strength of 
mind or goodness of heart to be an atheist. I repeat it. Xot 
one man in ten thousand has goodness of heart or strength of 
mind to be an atheist. 



which the conversation had taken a religious turn, Leigh Hunt, after 
having walked a Httle distance, expressed his surprise that such a 
man as Coleridge should, when speaking of Christ, always caU him 
our Saviour. Lamb, who had been exhilarated by one glass of that 
gooseberry or raisin cordial which he has so often anathematised, 
stammered out, ^' ne— ne — never mind what Coleridge says ; he is full 
of fun.** 



48 LETTERS, ETC. 

" And, were 1 not a Christian^ and that only in the sense in 
which I am a Christian^ I should be an atheist with Spinosa ; 
rejecting all in which I found insuperable difficulties, and resting 
my only hope in the gradual, and certain because gradual^ pro- 
gression of the species y 

" This, it is true, is negative atheism ; and this is, next to 
Christianity, the purest spirit of humanity !" 



" Disliking the whole course and conduct of Carlile, I yet 
hold with him as against his judges and persecutors. I hold 
the assertion, that Christianity is part and parcel of the law of 
the land, to be an absurdity. It might as well be said because 
there is, or might be, a law to protect carpenters in the exercise 
of their trade, that architecture is part and parcel of the law. 
The government, or rather the party administering the func- 
tions of government, have never had the courage to place the 
question in its true light, and bring the action for a crime 
against society, not against a creed. When a man gives up 
the right of self-defence to a state, it is tacitly understood that 
the state undertakes to protect him equally against* bodies of 

* To explain this allusion it will he necessary to state that the 
prosecution against Carlile was carried on by a loyal and constitu- 
tional association ; better known, at that time, as the Bridge Street 
(rang. I have preserved an hnpromptu of Coleridge's, (which I wrote 
down at the time,) upon this body; the allusions in, and the appH- 
cation of, which, will be readily made by all interested. 

Jack Stripe 

Eats tripe, 

It is therefore credible 

That tripe is edible. 

And therefore, perforce, 

It follows, of course, 

That the devil will gripe 

All who do not eat tripe. 

And as Nick is too slow 
To fetch 'em below, 



LETTERS, ETC. 49 

men as against individuals. Carlile may he wrong ; Ms perse- 
cutors undoubtedly are soJ^ 

'^ How I loathed the horrid speeches of the Attorney- General 
and of Mr. Justice Bayley, at the trial of that ^^Tetched man 
(Carlile). They said in so many words, ^ The Unitarian who 
differs with you in nine points out of ten is sacred, but in the 
one point where he agrees with you, you condemn the deist.' 
Certainly the repeal of the act against Unitarianism was entirely 
and unequivocally an acknowledgment that those points were 
not of moment. Carhle, if he had not been blinded by the 
steams arising from that hell, his own mind, might have taken 
advantage of this. Judge Abbot acted very well ; he put the 
question on the ground of incivism, and not on the religious 
ground. Xo doubt the early Christians, who in the second 
centmy threw down altars, attacked with uproar, railing and 
abuse, the existing religion, are not to be considered as martyrs, 
but as justly punished on the ground of incivism ; their conduct 
was contrary to the injunction of their Great Master.^' 



" The vulgar notion that a deist neither believes in a future 
state nor in the existence of spirits is false, according to the 
evidence of Christ himself; who expressly says, when ques- 
tioned on this point, ^ Believe ye not this ; neither would ye 
believe if one were to rise from the dead.' And again, ' Iso 
man who believes not in this, is worthy to be received.' '' 

And Gifford, the attorney, 
Won't quicken the journey ; 
The Bridge-Street Committee 
That colleague without pity, 
To im.prison and hang 
Carlile and his gang, 
Is the pride of the city : 
And 'tis association 
That, alone, saves the nation 
From death and damnation. 



50 

" The paradox tliat the greater the truth the greater the 
libel, has done much mischief. I had once intended to have 
-written a treatise on Phrases and their Consequences, and this 
would have been at the head. Certainly, if extended, it has 
some truth ; a man may state the truth in v/ords, and yet tell 
a lie in spirit, and as such deserve punishment for calumny.' ' 



" All men in power are jealous of the pre-eminence of men 
of letters; they feel, as towards them, conscious of inferior 
power, and a sort of misgiving that they are, indirectly^ and 
against their own willj mere instalments and agents of higher 
intellects. 

Men in power, for instance Lord Castlereagh, are conscious 
of inferiority, and are yet ashamed to own, even to themselves, 
the fact, which is only the more evident by their neglect of men 
of letters. So entirely was Mr. Pitt aware of this, that he 
would never allow of any intercourse with literary men of 
eminence ; fearing, doubtless, that the charm which spell-bound 
his political adherents would, at least for the time, fail of its 
effect.^' 



^^ There is a great, a general want of intellect at this time^ 
so much so that when any convulsion occurs, it will tell fatally. 
The fabric of our society resembles a house of cards built by 
children, which so long as the squares support a roof, and that 
roof an angle, and the inter-dependence is sufficient, all seems 
well ; but the moment the fabric is shaken, and when the com- 
ponent parts can no longer form an angle, it will assuredly fall 
to the ground. See First Lay Sermon. The Second Lay 
Sermon, and the Letters to Judge Fletcher are, in truth, won- 
derful prophecies.'' 



''• If I should finish ^ Christabel,' I shall certainly extend it 
and give new characters, and a greater number of incidents. 



LETTER?, ETC. 51 

This tlie ^ reading public ^ require, and this is the reason that 
Sir Walter Scott's Poems, though so loosely written, are 
pleasing, and interest us by their picturesqueness. 

" If a genial recuiTence of the ray divine should occur for a 
few weeks, I shall certainly attempt it. I had the whole of the 
two cantos in my mind before I began it : certainly the first 
canto is more perfect, has more of the true wild weird S23irit 
than the last. I laugiied heartily at the continuation in 
Blackwood, which I ha^-e been told is by Maginn : it is in 
appearance, and in appearance o??Z?/. a good imitation ; I do not 
doubt but that it gave more pleasure, and to a greater number, 
than a continuation by myself in the spirit of the two first 
cantos. 

^* The ^ Ancient Mariner ' cannot be imitated, nor the poem, 
* Love.' They may he excelled; tliey ctre not imitableJ^ 



'^ Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk * seem to have originated 
in a sort of familiar conversation between two clever men. v\'ho 
have said, ^ Let us write a book that will sell : you write this, 
and I yill write that,' and in a sort of laughing humoiu* set to 
work. This was the way that Southey and my self wrote many 
thino:s too'ether." 



" I am glad you are now to see the Wallenstein for the first 
time, as you will then see a specimen of my happiest attempt, 
dimng the prime manhood of my intellect, before I had been 
biiffetted by adversity or crossed by fatality. The • Eemorse ' 
is certainly a gi'eat favoimte of mine, the more so as certain 
pet abstract notions of mine are therein expounded.*' 

* I haA'e extracted from the above Tvork the following tribute to the 
genius of Coleridge by Professor TTilson. darum et ve/ierahile nomen. 

'•If there be any man of grand and original genius ahve at this 
moment, in Europe, it is Coleiidge ; nothing can surpass the mehjdious 
richness of words which he heaps around his images — images which 



52 

" Mr. Green is indeed a worthy man, at least so all my 
friends say. Bred up from the age of twelve in a hospital, he 
has yet not failed to shun their horrid materialism. He has 
come to a very different conclusion to that at which most other 
operators, most psychologists have arrived. He has been able 
to believe in a spiritual first cause and in a presiding free will. 
This you will see in his preface.* 

" I deplore in my inmost heart the present mental degrada- 
tion of E., who, not contented with denying the primal truths 
of religion and the divine nature of man, holds opinions which 
were ever considered as base, hateful, and to be abhorred ; 
opinions which degrade man below the beast. Quoted that 
passage of Cicero, wherein he says, — " Concerning these things 
there are (or may be) different opinions ; but those who dis- 
believe the existence of goodness, not only from the want of it 
themselves but after much consideration, are to be held as out 
of the pale of society." 



are not glaring in themselves, bnt which are always affecting to the 
very verge of tears, because they have all been formed and nourished 
in the recesses of one of the most deeply musing spirits that ever 
breathed forth its inspirations in the majestic language of England. 
Who that ever read ' Genevieve ' can doubt this ? That poem is known 
to all readers of poetry, although comparatively few of them are aware 
that it is the work of Coleridge. His love-poetry is, throughout, the 
finest that has been produced in England since the days of Shakspeare 
and the old dramatists. The old dramatists, and Coleridge, regard 
women with far higher reverence — far deeper insight into the true 
grandeur of their gentleness. I do not think there is any poet in the 
world who ever touched so truly the mystery of the passion as 
he has done in '■ Genevieve,' and in that other exquisite poem where 
he speaks of 

Her voice — 
Her voice, that, even in its mirthful mood, 
Hath made me wish to steal away and weep." 

* It is to be hoped that Mr. Green will favour the world with the 
process by which he has arrived at these conclusions. 



LETTERS ETC. 53 

" Tobin came one morning with a face of mncli interest to 
inform me that Davy had made a wonderful discoveiy. ^ I 
donbt it not ; I think he will make many discoveries.' ^ Yes, 
yes ; but I mean in philosophy. He tells me he has discovered 
that it is possible there may be a God ! ' " 

^^ I once asked Tom Clarkson whether he ever thought of 
his probable fate in the next world, to which he replied, ' How 
can I ? I think only of the slaves in Barbadoes ! ' Does 
Mr. Wilberforce care a farthing for the slaves in the West 
Indies, or if they were all at the devil, so that his soul were 
saved f 

" As there is a worldliness or the too-much of this life, so 
there is another- worldliness, or rather other ivorldliness, equally 
hateful and selfish mth this ivorldliness/^ 



" Lord Erskine, speaking of animals, hesitating to call them 
brutes, hit upon that happy phrase — ^the mute creation.''' 



" Lord Kenyon, on the trial of a bookseller, for publishing 
Paine's ^ Age of Eeason,' in his charge to the jury, enumerated 
many celebrated men who had been sincere Christians ; and, 
after having enforced the example of Locke and ISTewton, — 
both of whom were Unitarians, and therefore not Christians, — 
proceeded : — ' ISTor, gentlemen, is this belief confined to men 
of comparative seclusion, since men, the greatest and niost 
distinguished both as philosophers and as monarchs, have 
enforced this belief, and shown its influence by their conduct. 
Above all, gentlemen, need I name to you the Emperor Julian, 
who was so celebrated for the practice of every Christian 
virtue that he w^as called Julian the Apostle.' "* 

* This most extraordinary blunder must have arisen from tke judge's 
reading having been more select than various. It is probable that 
all the knowledge he had of Julian was picked out of Fielding's 
" Journey to the Next World," which, however, he seems not to have 
understood. 



54 LETTERS, ETC. 

"It is indisputable that nervous excitation is contagious. 
The greater part of ghost stories may be traced to this source.'' 



" Forms exist before the substance out of which they are 
shaped." 



" One thought inckides all thoLight, in the sense that a grain 
of sand includes the universe. 

" I hold with St. Paul that charity is the gi^eatest of the 
virtues. Original sin is best explained by depravation of the 
will. Calvinism, or the belief in election, is not simply blas- 
phemy, but superfetation of blasphemy.'' 



" For one person who has remarked or praised a beautiful 
passage in Walter Scott's works, a hundred have said, ^ How 
many volumes he has written ! ' So of Mathev/s : it is not 
' How admirable such and such parts are ! ' but, ^ It is wonder- 
ful that one man can do all this / ' " 



LETTER X. 

My very Dear Friend, August Sth^ 1820. 

Neither indolence nor procrastination have had any place 
among the causes of my silence, least of all either yourself, or 
the subject of your letter, or the purpose of answering it, having 
been absent from my thoughts. You may with almost literal 
truth attribute it to want of time, from the number, quantity, 
and quality of my engagements, the necessity of several jour- 
neys to and (still worse) in tovvm being the largest waster of 
time and spirits. At length I have settled J. for the next six 
or eight weeks with Mr. Montague, where he is engaged on an 
Essay on the Principles of Taste in relation to Metre and 
Eh}i;hm, containing, first, a new scheme of prosody, as applied 
to the choral and lyrical stanzas of the Greek drama ; secondly, 
the possibinty of improving and enriching our English versi- 



LETTERS, ETC. 



55 



fication by digging in the original mines, viz. — the tunes of 
nature and impassioned conversation, both of which may be 
illustrated from Mr. Frere's* Aristophanic Poems. I have 

* As these poems, the precursors of " Beppo " and '' Don Juan,** 
are not now in general circulation, I subjoin two short extracts— one a 
sketch of a gallant knight; the second showing the advantage of 
being well victualled. 

On every point, in earnest and in jest, 

His judgment, and his prudence, and his wit 

Were deemed the very touchstone and the text 

Of what was proper, graceful, just, and fit, 

A word from him set everything at rest, 

His short decisions never failed to hit ] 

His silence, his reserve, his inattention, 

Were felt as the severest reprehension. 

His memory was the magazine and hoard 

Where claims and grievances, from year to year, 

And confidences and complaints were stored, 

From dame and knight, from damsel, boor and peer ; 

Loved by his friends, and trusted by his lord, 

A generous courtier, secret and sincere, 

Adviser-general to the whole community. 

He served his friend, but watched his opportunity. 



For, in the garrison where he presided, 
Neither distress, nor famine, nor disease 
Were felt, nor accident nor harm betided 
The happy monk ^ but plenteous, and with ease, 
All needful monkish viands were provided ; 
Bacon and pickled herring, pork and peas j 
And, when the table-beer began to fail. 
They found resources in the bottled ale. 

Dinner and supper kept their usual hours, 
Breakfast and luncheon never were delayed, 
While to the sentries on the walls and towers, 
Between two hot plates, messes were conveyed. 
At the departure of the invading power, 
It was a boast the noble abbot made. 
None of his monks were weaker, paler, thinner, 
Ox, during all the siege, had lost a dinner. 



56 

been working hard to bring together for him the notes, &c., 
that I had prepared on this subject. E, has been ill, and even 
now is far from well. There are some persons — I have knowTi 
several — who, when they find themselves uncomfortable, take 
up the pen and transfer as much discomfort as they can to their 
absent friends. But I know only one of this sort, who, as soon 
as they take up the pen, instantly become dolorous^ however 
smug, snug, and cheerful the minute before and the minute after. 

Now just such is Mrs. D., God bless her ! and she has been 
writing letter after letter to E. about J., and every discomfort- 
able recollection and anticipation that she could conjure up^ 
that she has completely overset him. This must not he. Mr. 
Gillman, too, has been out of sorts^ but at this present we are 
all better. I at least am as well as I ever am, and my regular 
employment, in which Mr. Green is weekly my amanuensis, 
the work on the books of the Old and New Testaments, intro- 
duced by the assumptions and postulates required as the pre- 
conditions of a fair examination of Christianity as a scheme of 
doctrines, precepts, and histories, drawn or at least deducible 
from these books. And now, in the narrative line, I have only 
to add that Mrs. Gillman desires to be affectionately remem- 
bered to you, and bids me entreat you to stay amay as long- 
as you possibly can, provided it be from London as well as 
from High gate. 

Would to heaven I were with you ! In a few days you 
should see that the spirit of the mountaineer is not yet utterly 
extinct in me. Wordsworth has remarked (in the Brothers, 
I believe), 

'' The thought of death sits light upon the man 
That has been bred, and dies among the mountains." 

But I fear that this, like some other few of Wordsworth's 
viany striking passages, means less than it seems, or rather 
promises, to mean. Poets (especially if philosophers too) are 
apt to represent the effect made upon themselves as general ; 



LETTERS, ETC. 57 

tli9 geese of Phoebus are all swans ; and Wordsworth^s shep- 
herds and estates men are Wordsworth's, even (as in old 
Michael) in the unpoetic traits of character. Whether moun- 
tains have any particular effect on the native inhabitants by 
\drtue of being mountains exclusively, and what that effect is, 
would be a difficult problem. If independent tribes, moun- 
taineers are robbers of the lowlanders ; brave, active, and with 
all the usual warlike good and bad qualities that result from 
habits of adventurous robbery. Add clanship and the super- 
stitions that are the surviving precipitate of an established 
religion, both which are common to the uncivilised Celtic 
tribes, in plain no less than in mountain, and you have the 
Scottish Highlanders. But where the inhabitants exist as 
states, or civilised parts of civilised states, they appear to 
be in mind and character just what their condition and 
employments would render them in level plain, the same 
as amid Alpine heights. At least the influence acts in- 
directly only, as far as the mountains are the causa causce 
or occasion of a pastoral life instead of an agricultural; 
thus combining a lax and common property, possessed by a 
whole district, with small hereditary estates sacred to each, 
while the properties in sheep seem to partake of both characters. 
And truly, to this circumstance, aided by the favourable action 
of a necessarily scanty population (for man is an oak that 
wants room, not 2, plantation tree)^ we must attribute whatever 
superiority the mountaineers of Cumberland and Westmore- 
land and of the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps possess, as the 
shocking contrast of the Welsh mountaineers too clearly 
evinces. But this subject I have discussed, and (if I do not 
flatter myself) satisfactorily, in the Literary Life, and I will 
not conceal from you that this inferred dependency of the 
human soul on accidents of birth-place and abode, together 
with the vague, misty, rather than mystic, confusion of God 
with the world, and the accompanying nature-worship, of* 
which the asserted dependence forms a part, is the trait in 



Wordsworth^s poetic works that I most dislike as imliealtliful, 
and denounce as contagions ; wliile the odd introduction of the 
popular, ahiiost the vulgar, religion in his later publications 
(the popping in, as Hartley says, of the old man mth a beard), 
suggests the painful suspicion of worldly prudence — at best a 
justification of masking truth (which, in fact, is a falsehood 
substituted for a truth withheld) on plea of expediency — car- 
ried into religion. At least it conjures up to my fancy a sort 
of Janus head of Spinosa and Dr. Watts, or "I and my 
brother the dean.^' 

Permit me, then, in the place of the two lines, 

" The thought of death sits easy on the man. 
Who hath been bred, and dies among the mountains," 
to say, 

" The thought of death sits easy on the man, 
Whose earnest will hath lived among the deathless." 

And I can perhaps build upon this foundation an ansvv^er to the 
question, which would deeply interest me, by whomever put, 
and pained me only because it was put by you ; i. e, because 
I feared it might be the inspiration of ill health, and am 
jealous of any conserding of that inward will which, with some 
mysterious germination, moves in the Bethesda pool of our 
animal life, to mthdraw its resistance. For the soul, among 
its other regalia, has an energetic veto against all undermining 
of the constitution, and among these, as not the least insidious, 
I consider the thoughts and hauntings that tamper with the 
love of life. 

Do not so ! you ivould not, if I could transfer into you, in 
all its depth and liveliness, the sense what a hope, promise, 
impulse, you are to me in my present efforts to realise my past 
labours ; and by building up the temple, — the shaped stones, 
beams, pillars, yea, the graven ornaments and the connecting 
clamps of which have been piled up by me, only in too great 
abundance, — to enable you and my two (may I not say other) 
sons to affirm, — Vivit, quia non frustra vixit. 



LETTERS, ETC. 0^ 

In reading an extract in tlie German Encjcloposdia from 
Dobrizlioffer^s most interesting account of tlie Abiponenses, a 
savage tribe in Paraguay, houseless, yet in person and in 
morals the noblest of savage tribes ; who, when first known 
by Europeans, amounted to 100,000 warriors, yet have a 
tradition that they were but the relic of a far more numerous 
community, and who by wars with other savage tribes, and by 
intestine feuds among themselves, are now dwindled to a 
thousand (men, women, and children do not exceed fivQ 
thousand), it struck me with distinct remembrance — first, that 
this is the history of all savage tribes ; and, second, that all 
tribes are savage that have not a positive religion defecated 
from witchcraft, and an established priesthood contra-distin- 
guished from individual conjurers. Nay, the islands of the 
Pacific (the Polynesia, which sooner or later the swift and 
silent m^asonry of the coral worm-S will compact into a rival 
continent, into Sijifth quarter of the world), blest with all the 
plenties of nature, and enjoying an immunity from all the 
ordinary dangers of savage life, were many of them utterly 
dispeopled since their first discovery, and wholly by their ov/n 
feuds and vices ; nay, that their bread-fruit tree and their 
delicious and healthful climate had only made the process of 
mutual destruction and self-destruction more hateful, more 
basely sensual. This, therefore, I assrnne as an undoubted 
fact of history ; and from this, as a portion of the history of 
men^ I draw a new (to my knowledge, at least, a new) series 
of proofs of several, I might say of all^ the positions of pre- 
eminent importance and interest more than vital; a series 
which, taken in harmonious counterpart to a prior series drawn 
from interior history (the history of man)^ the documents of 
which are to be found only in the archives of each individuars 
own consciousness, will form a complete whole — a system of 
evidence, consisting of two correspondent worlds, as it were, 
correlative and mutually potentiating, yet each integral and 
self-subsistent — having the same correlation, as the geometry 



60 

and the observations, or the metaphysics and the physics, of 
astronomy. If I can thus demonstrate the truth of the 
doctrine of existence after the present life, it is not improbable 
that some rays of light may fall on the question, what state of 
existence it may be reasonably supposed to be ? At all events, 
we shall, I trust, be enabled to determine negatively, what it 
can 720^ be for any ; and /or whom this or that, which does not 
appear imiversally precluded, is yet for them precluded. In 
plainer words, what can not be, universally speaking; second, 
what may be ; third, what the differences may be for different 
individuals, within the limits prescribed in No. 2 ; fourth, what 
scheme of embodied representation of the future state (our 
reason not forbidding the same) is recommended by the true&t 
analogies ; and, fifth, w^hat scheme it is best to combine with 
our belief of a hereafter, as most conducive to the growth and 
cultivation of our collective faculties in this life, or of each in 
the order of its comparative worth, value, and permanence. 
This I must defer to another letter, for I cannot let another 
post pass by, without your knowing that we are all thinking 
of and loving you. 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



To the preceding letter, pregnant as it is with materials for 
thinking, your attention will be attracted, both by the great 
variety of subjects brought forward and illustrated, and by the 
expressions of earnest and affectionate attachment w^hich it 
contains. 

Certainly no man that I ever knew united in so great a 
degree, so entirely ^ ^'fondeur'^ with the most extreme sim- 
plicity, and the most artless and confiding affection. The whole 
craving of his moral being was for love. Who is not affected, 
what man does not grieve, when he hears him exclaim — 

'' To be BELOVED is ALL I need, 
'■'' To he BELOVED is /love i\ 



■ Why was I made for love, and love denied to me ?' 



LETTERS, ETC. 61 

Alas! my dear children, how can I hope to convey to 
you (except your own minds are consenting) all that this 
glorious being was to me in the days when his vast intellect 
was in its most gorgeous manhood, and I was yet in the first 
singleness, and, I will add, pm'ity, of mind. 

'^ Few, and far between,'' are the moments when I can recall 
that other self, which, in days past, sat at the feet of the 
greatest of moderns — that seemed to unite energy, variety, a 
mind eminently suggestive, with an affection and a reverence, 
without any assignable limits, for whatever was beautiful and 
loveable in man or in external nature, 

" ^^Tio was retired as noon-tide dew 
Or fountain in a noon-day grove ; 
And you must love him, ere to you 
He will seem worthy of your love. 

" The outward shows of sky and earth, 
Of hill and valley he has viewed ; 
And impulses of deeper birth 
Have come to him in sohtude. 

" In common things that round us lie, 
Some random truths he can impart, 
The harvest of a quiet eye, 

That broods and sleeps on his own heart. 

" But he is shy, both man and boy 
Hath been an idler in the land ; 
Contented^ if lie might enjoy 

The things that others under stand,' ^ 



The next letter which contained the farther development 
of the very interesting matters opened in the preceding letter, 
I have mislaid, or, I much fear, lost. 



62 LETTERS, ETC. 

LETTER XL 

My DEAR Friend, Highgatej Oct lltJi^ 1820. 

You will think it childish in me, and more savouring 
of a jealous boarding-school miss than a friend and a philoso- 
pher, when I confess that the " with great respect, your obliged 
and grateful...,'' gave me pain. But I did not return from 
Mr. Cooper's, at whose house we all dined, till near midnight, 
and did not open the packet till this morning after getting out 
of bed ; and this you know is the hour in which the cat-organ 
of an irritable viscerage is substituted for the brain as the 
mind's instrument. 

The Cobbett is assuredly a strong and battering production 
throughout, and in the best bad style of this political 
rhinoceros, with his coat armour of dry and wet mud, and his 
one horn of brutal strength on the nose of scorn and hate ; 
not to forget the flaying rasp of his tongue ! There is one 
article of his invective, however, from which I cannot with- 
hold my vote of consent : that I mean which respects Mr. 
Brougham's hollow complimentary phrases to the ministry 
and the House of Lords. On expressing my regret that his 
poor hoaxed and hunted client had been lured or terrified into 
the nets of the revolutionists, and had taken the topmost perch, 
as the flaring, screaming maccaw, in the clamorous aviary of 
faction, Sherifl' Williams, who dined with us, premising that 
his wishes accorded with mine, declared himself, however, fully 
and deeply convinced, that, without this alliance, the Queen 
must have been overwhelmed, not wholly or even chiefly from 
the strength of the party itself, but because, without the ac- 
tivity, enthusiasm, and combination, peculiar to the reformists, 
her case, in all its detail and mth all its appendages, would 
never have had that notoriety so beyond example universal ; 
which (to translate Sheriff Williams into Poet Coleridge), 
with kettle-drum reveillee, had echoed through the mine and 
the coal-pit, which had lifted the latch of every cottage, and 



LETTERS, ETC. 63 

thundered witli no run-away knock at Carlton Palace. I 
could only reply, that I had never yet seen, heard, or read of 
any advantage in the long run, occurring to a good cause from 
an unholy alliance with evil passions and incongruous or alien 
purposes. It was ever heavy on my heart, that the people, 
alike high and lovv^, do perish for lack of knowledge ; that both 
sheep and shepherd, the Flocks and the Pastors, go astray 
among swamps and in desolate places, for w^ant of the Truth^ 
the whole Truth, and nothing hut the Truth ; and that the 
sacred motto, which I had adopted for my first political publica- 
tion (^^ The Watchman "), would be the aspiration of my death- 
bed — That all may know the truth ; and that the 

TRUTH MAY MAKE US FREE. 

I observed farther, that in bodies of men, not accidentally 
collected nor promiscuously, but such as our House of Lords, 
the usual effect of terror was, first, self-justification as to the 
worst of their past violent and unconstitutional measures ; and, 
next, a desperate behef that their safety would be still more 
endangered by giving way than by plunging onvv'ard ; that, if 
they must fall, they would fall in that way in which they might 
take vengeance on the occasion of the mischief. If the propo- 
sition be either ... or ... , and the latter blank is to be 
filled up by a Civil War^ v:h?d shall we put for the former, to 
make our duty to submit to it deniable or even doubtful ? A 
Legislature permitted bj us to stand in the eye of the whole 
civilised Yv^orld as the representative of our country, corruptly 
and ruthlessly pandering to an IndividuaFs Lust and Hate ! 
Open Hostility to Innocence, and the subversion of justice, a 
shameless trampling under foot of the Laws of God and the 
Principles of the Constitution, in the name and against the 
knowTi will of the Nation ! Well ! if anything, it must be 
this ! It is a decision, compared with which the sentence of 
the elder Brutus were a grief for which an onion might supply 
the tears. A dreadful decision ! But be it so ! — How much 
more then are we bound to be careful, that no conduct of our 



G4 LETTERS, ETC. 

own, no assent or countenance given by us to the violence of 
others, no want of courage and alertness in denouncing the same, 
should have the least tendency to bring about an act or event, 
dire enough to justify a civil war for its preventive ? I pro- 
duced, as you may suppose, but small effect; and yet your 
very note enforces the truth of my reply — for these very 
answers of the Queen^s conjointly with her plebicolar (or 
plebicolous) Clap-Trapperies in the live puppet-show of wicked 
Punch and his mfe, that has come back again, and the devil 
on all sides, make it impossible for me to ask you, as I other- 
wise should have done, — What proof, proveably independent 
of the calumny plot, have we of any want of delicacy in the 
Queen ? What act or form of demeanour can be adduced on 
competent testimony, from which we are forced or entitled to 
infer innate Coarseness, if not Grossness ? The dire disclosure 
of the extent and extremes to which Calumny may be carried — 

and perhaps the recent persecution of poor dear mixes 

its w^orkings — makes me credulous in incredulity ; so that I 
am almost prepared to reverse the proverb, and think that 
"• what every one says must be a lie !" They put a body up 
to the nostrils in the dunghill of reeking slander, and then 
exclaim : There is no smoke without some fire ! 

It is my purpose, God willing ! to leave this place on 
Friday, so as to take an afternoon coach, if any such there be, 
or the Oxford mail, as the dernier resource — and so to be in 
Oxford by Saturday morning, while my letter, which is unfor- 
tunately a very long one (and I could not make it otherwise), 
will reach Dr. Copplestone, if arrived, on Friday morning ; 
thus giving him a day's preparation for the personal interview. 
How long my absence from Highgate may be, I cannot of 
course predetermine; certainly not an horn- beyond what 

's interest requires. 

God bless you, my dear friend, and your truly affectionate, 
and — if it did not look like a retort^ how truly might I not 
add — Your obliged and grateful friend, 

T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. COLEEIDGE. 



LETTERS, ETC. 65 

P.S. — Sheriff Williams is apparently a very T\'ortliy, and 
assuredly a very entertaining man. He gave us accounts, on 
his own evidence, of wonderful things respecting Miss M'Evoy 
and a Mr. De Yains of Liverpool ; so wonderful as to threaten 
the stoppage even of my Bank of Faith. 

I have just heard from Derwent, who is well : but I have 
not had time to decipher his villainous scrawl. 



I wish it was possible for me to give even a faint notion of 
the splendid eloquence of my friend on this topic. The interest 
he took in this great question on all occasions, induced me to 
entreat repeatedly that he would embody his views and 
opinions in a pamphlet, to be called •• Thoughts on the Present 
Persecution;" but better, cenainly more prudent, coimsels 
prevailed. 

On the conduct of Mr. Brougham in this case, he was accus- 
tomed to animadvert with great severity. His great and 
constant indiscretions, and, above all, an insincerity, which 
then seemed to have an object, but which greater experience 
has shown to arise from want of Ballast, in short (why should 
I not say it ?) from mental unsoundness, were at that time 
matters of deep regret to all right-minded men. 

It is painful thus to speak of a man variously gifted, and 
possessed unquestionably of great talents ; but it is needful to 
bear in mind, that though men of restless natures and irritable 
temperaments have frequently been the instruments of fimc- 
tional improvements, they are totally unsuited to times which 
require organic changes. If this be the case T\ith regard to 
men who are restless from enthusiasm, or whose fermentation 
arises from the crude state of their minds, and respecting whom 
there is yet hope when experience shall have mellowed their 
convictions, what shall we say of those, to whom time bmgs 
no improvement — age, no mental repose ? It is the duty of 
all men, who have calmly observed, meditated, and reflected, 
who are sufficiently near to be interested, and remote enough 

5 



66 LETTERS, ETC. 

for quiet contemplation, to put tlieir testimony on record ; 
which, though it may not avail in the present times, will yet 
serve as a time- mark for the future. 

Yet I can never believe but that a man so variously gifted 
must, at some time or other, have had aspirations of a higher 
and purer nature than should seem possible, judging of the 
turmoil and turbulence of his latter career. Hear what is 
thought of this man by an accomplished foreigner. In a letter 
of Jacquemont's, written from the Himalaya, are the following 
reflections, which are but too just : — '' I have just read the 
sixteen immense columns of Lord Brougham's speech on 7th 
Oct., 1831. What talents ! but what a perverted use of talent. 
What a disagreeable kind of talent is that, which disgusts the 
hearer instead of conciliating him. If I were a public man, I 
would study Brougham, not to resemble him. What is the 
use of that cutting irony, that bitter sarcasm, that super- 
cilious pride ? What is the use of those Greek and Latin 
verses?'^ 

I must also protest against the terms employed, in speaking 
of the very extraordinary man lately lost to that countiy he so 
dearly loved, and for the welfare of which country, and those 
who lived upon it and by it, his last words were uttered. 

A man more kind-hearted, more kindly^ I never knew. That 
he was intolerant, turbulent, and domineering, I admit freely, 
but towards whom ? To those only who were self-seekers, 
proud, narrow in their views, and, above all, to those who 
sought to oppress and degrade that great class from which 
lie sprung, and with which he gloried to identify himself. 

To the concluding portion of this letter it will be needless 
to point attention. Like every thing my friend wrote, it is 
for all time, and would be equally applicable in its spirit under 
any conceivable form of society. 

The American coachman, who, to the great surprise of Mr. 
Stewart, told him more of the practice and mode of teaching 
at the High School of Edinburgh than he knew himself. 



67 

aUhough educated* at that school, justly observed that the 
two great principles which have divided and still divide 
mankind, are eternal, and not dependent upon the names 
with which they are associated. Substituting only the words 
'' true Eeformer'' for ''Whig" (for here the Whigs are not 
true Eeformers), I know not a more just observation. '' In 
truth, the parties of Whig and Tory are those of Xature. 
They exist in all countries, whether called by those names or by 
those of aristocrats and democrats, cote droite and cote gauche, 
ultras and radicals, serviles and liberals. The sickly, weakly, 
timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature ; the 
healthy, strong, and bold man cherishes them, and is a Whig 
by nature." It is well that the people of England are not 
educated to any knowledge of their political rights, or the 
scandalous frauds of the past year would have met their fitting 
punishments. How long will the manly and mature intellect 
of this great mother, this great hive, of nations submit to the 
guidance of litterateurs and lordlings, who, by virtue of pre- 
tension and prescription alone, are held to be fit to govern 
nations, though there are few men in the present cabinet to 
whom a merchant would intrust a ship, a farmer employ as a 
bailiff, or a draper engage as an assistant, even were their 
services offered gratuitously. 

* When Lord Stanley was in America, it was necessary to speak 
of the General Post Office : he did not know where it was ; whilst a 
judge who was at the table pointed out its exact situation in Lombard- 
street, and evinced so much local knowledge, that Lord Stanley said — 

*' You must have been a long time in London, ?" '' I was 

never there in my life," was the reply. 

See here the difference. The American had informed himself of 
that which he was not expected to know, which it was excusable in 
him not to know ; whilst the aristocrat was ignorant of that which it 
was .incumbent upon him to have known. 



68 LETTERS, ETC. 

LETTEE XIL 

My dear Friend, Oct 20th, 1820. 

Doubtless nothing can be more delightful to me, inde- 
pendent of Mrs. Gillman's kind but unnecessary anxieties, 
than to go to Oxford with you. Nay, though it will be but a 
flight to and fro, with a sojourn but of two days, if so much, 
yet I should even ask it of you if I were quite sure, abso- 
lutely sure, that it would not inconvenience you. 

But in the fear of this, I could not ask or receive your com- 
panionship mthout some selfishness which would completely 
baffle itself. 

I have not yet received an answer from Oxford respecting 
Dr. Coplestone's return to Oriel. 

God bless you, my ever dear friend, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



Of this journey to Oxford I have a very painful recollec- 
tion ; perhaps the most painful recollection (one excepted) 
connected with the memory of Coleridge. Still I think that 
the journey was beneficial to his health, and that he was better 
for some weeks after his return. 



^^ A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts, 
as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves 
which precede and follow it." 



'• In the system of gra^dty, Newton only developed the 
idea of Kepler. He advanced a step, and there he fixed his 
followers. Kepler would have progressed, or have been 
stationary in act at least.'' 



69 

LETTEE XIII. 

My dearest Friend, Oct 25th, 1820. 

It will please you, though I scarcely know whether the 
pleasure is worth the carriage, to know that my own feelings 
and convictions were, from the very commencement of this 
unhappy affair, viz.— -the terms proposed to the Queen by 
Lord Hutchinson, in coincidence with your present suggestion, 
and that I actually began an essay, and proposed a sort of 
diary, i, e. remarks moral and political, according as the events 
of the day suggested them. But Mr. GiUman dissuaded me. 
Again, about five weeks ago I had written a letter to Conder, 
the editor of the " Eclectic Review'' and ci-devant bookseller, 
offering, and offering to execute, a scheme of publication, '^ the 
Queen's case stated morally ; 2, judicially ; 3, politically." 
But again Mr. G. earnestly persuaded me to suppress it. His 
reasons were, first, that my mind was not sufficiently tranquil, 
in consequence of I.'s affair, to enable me to rely upon going 
through with the publication ; secondly, that it would probably 
involve me with certain of my connexions in high life, and be 
injurious to Hartley and Derwent, especially the latter ; with 
thirdly, the small chance of doing any good, people are so 
guided by their first notions. To tell you the truth, Mr. G.'s 
own dislike to it was of more weight than all his three 
reasons. 

However, we will talk of the publication, if it he not too late, 
and at all events I will compose the statement. 

I pray you make no apologies for doing that which cannot 
but add to the esteem and affection with which I am most 
truly jour friend, fraternally and paternally, 

We shall soon see you ? S. T. Coleridge. 

T. Allsop, Esq. 



Shortly after this I find the following heads of conversation : — 
" I recoUect meeting Mr. Brougham weU. I met him at 



70 

Mr. Sharp's with Mr. Horner. They were then aspirants for 
political adventures. Mr. Horner bore in his conversation and 
demeanour evidence of that straight- forward and generous 
frankness w^hich characterised him through life. You saw, or 
rather you felt, that you could rely upon his integrity. His 
mind was better fitted to reconcile discrepancies than to dis- 
cover analogies. He had fine, nay, even high, talent rather 
than genius. Mr. Brougham, on the contrary, had an apparent 
restlessness, a consciousness, not of superior powers, but of 
superior activity, a man whose heart v/as placed in w^hat 
should have been his head : you were never sm*e of him — you 
always doubted his sincerity. He was at that time a hanger-on 
upon Lord Holland, Mr. Horner being under the auspices of 
Lord Lansdowne. 

'^ From that time I lost sight of Mr. Brougham for some 
time. When we next met, the subject of the parliamentary 
debates was alluded to, previously to which Mr. Brougham 
had expressed opinions which were in unison with my own 
upon a matter at that time of great public interest. 

^' I said ^ I could never rely upon what was given for the 
future in the newspapers, as they had made him say directly 
the contrary ; I w^as glad to be undeceived.' 

^^ ^ Oh,' said Brougham, in a tone of voice half confidential 
and half jocular, ^ Oh, it was very true I said so in Parliament, 
where there is a party, but we know better.' 

" I said nothing ; but I did not forget it^ 



^- The question of the atonement and of the sacrament being 
introduced, he insisted on the divine origin of the sacrament, 
and that it was to be understood in a mystical sense, not, how- 
ever, as a real presence. It has very clearly relation to the 
sixth chapter of John; nay, Clement expressly affirms it to 
be a solemn mysterious ceremony, in which he is sustained by 
Justin Martyr, With respect to free will, in the ordinary 



LETTERS, ETC. 71 

acceptatiOTij he affirmed it to be incompatible witb omnipotence, 
with the attributes of that God who is omniscient and omni- 
present, who is in all things, and in whom all things are, to 
whom time past and time to come ever is. Man is not to be 
saved without his saving grace." 

" Speaking of the term ^ Son of Man,' taken literally by the 
Socinians, he said, — ' The Son of Man ! What is it but 
mockery if he w^ere really a man, the man Jesus Christ. He 
was incarnate in Trinity or tri-unity ; first, he was incarnate 
as the Logos, or Word ; next, he was incarnate wdth the Holy 
Spirit unto all things, that he might remain in the spirit ; and, 
lastly, he was incarnate in his humanity.' " 



" Compared to the Jewish law, given as it was in thunders 
and in terrible convulsions of the elements, the miracles of the 
Christian dispensation were devoid of interest, 

" There can be no doubt that a religion like that of the Jews, 
a religion of punishments and threat enings only, was incom- 
plete ; it must, therefore^ be false, or it required to be perfected." 



" Speaking of Baxter, he affirmed that he w^as a century 
before his time, that he was a logician, and first applied the 
tri-fold or tri-une demonstration. Heretofore, the two-fold 
method only v^as knov^n as the arguing from a positive to a 
negative, the reality ei^go the visionary. He also first intro- 
duced the method of argument, that the thing or reason 
given contains a positive and its opposite; e, ^., reality 
contains the actual and the potential, as, I sit, the actual, but 
I have the power, the potentiality, of walldng. Baxter tried 
to reconcile the ahnost irreconcilable tenets of Calvinism and 
Arminianism. He more than any other man was the cause of 
the restoration, and more than any other sectarian w^as he per- 
secuted by Charles II. 

" He is borne out in all his statements by Mrs. liucy 



72 LETTERS, ETC 

Hutchinson, that most delightful of women and of regicldesses. 
No doubt the Commons had a right to punish the weak and 
perfidious king, inasmuch as he first appealed to the God of 
Battles/' 



" The present ministry (the Liverpool-Castlereagh cabinet), 
although it contains some men of ability, is supported chiefly 
by its own weakness, which in every instance leads or rather 
compels it to a mean and abject prostration of the prerogative 
to the House of Commons, and by the unpopularity of the oppo- 
sition, arising from their having opposed themselves to the 
French war and to the grant of assistance to Spain. The 
gTand mistake of Mr. Fox was, that he did not separate the 
causes of the war from the consequences, but acted as though, 
having espoused the cause of the French revolution, he must 
in every instance advocate its measures. This lost him hia 
party, and swelled the ranks of Mr. Pitt, a man utterly unfitted 
for the conduct of a war, all his plans being based upon, so 
called, expediency, and pernicious short-sightedness, which 
would never allow him to take into his calculation the future.'' 



*' Even the very successes of our naval power contributed, 
and that in a most influential degree, to form and render 
extreme the military spirit in France; for, utterly and 
entirely weaning men from commerce and maritime concerns, 
they necessarily gave exclusive attention to military affairs, 
for on the sea, hope, even, did not exist for France." 



"It is not uncommon for 100,000 operatives (mark this 
word, for words in this sense are things) to be out of employment 
at once in the cotton districts (this was in 1820), and, thrown 
upon parochial relief, are dependent upon hard-hearted task- 
masters for food. The Malthusian doctrine would indeed afford 
a certain means of relief if this were not a two-fold question. 



LETTERS, ETC. 73 

If, when you say to a man, — ' You have no claim upon me ; 
you have your allotted part to perform in the world, so have I. 
In a state of nature, indeed, had I food, I should offer you a 
share from sympathy, from humanity ; but in this advanced and 
artificial state of society, I cannot afford you relief; 7/ou must 
starve. You came into the world when it could not sustain you.' 
What would be this man^s answer ? He would say, — ' You 
disclaim all connexion with me ; I have no claims upon you ? 
I can then have no duties towards you^ and this pistol shall 
put me in possession of your wealth. You may leave a law 
behind you which shall hang me, but what man who saw 
assured starvation before him, ever feared hanging.' It is 
this accursed practice of ever considering only what seems 
expedient for the occasion, disjoined from all principle or 
enlarged systems of action, of never listening to the true and 
unerring impulses of our better nature, which has led the 
colder- hearted men to the study of political economy, which 
has turned our Parliament into a real committee of public 
safety. In it is all power vested ; and in a few years we 
shall either be governed by an aristocracy, or, what is still 
more likely, by a contemptible democratical oligarchy of 
glib economists, compared to which the worst form of ax^isto- 
cracy would be a blessing.'' 



" Commerce has enriched thousands, it has been the cause of 
the spread of knowledge and of science, but has it added one 
particle of happiness or of moral improvement ? Has it given 
us a truer insight into our duties, or tended to revive and 
sustain in us the better feelings of our nature ? N^o ! no ! 
when I consider what the consequences have been, v/hen I 
consider that whole districts of men, who would otherwise have 
slumbered on in comparatively happy ignorance, are now little 
less than brutes in their lives, and something worse than brutes 
in their instincts, I could almost wish that the manufactm^ing 
districts were swallowed up as Sodom and Gomorrah." 



74 

'' Some men — Jeffrey is one — refer taste to palate.'^ 



" Absm^d terms, when compared, as ^ conclusion of a war/ 
^ conclusion of a peace/ In the one case it means the end, in 
the other the beginning.'' 



" I am unable to account for Mr. Locke's popularity ; in 
some degree it may be owing to his having exposed and con- 
futed the absurdities, or rather the absurd part, of the schoolmen. 
Hume has carried his premises to their natural and inevitable 
conclusion." 



" The idea of the mind forming images of itself, is as absurd 
as the belief of Descartes with respect to the external world. 
There is nothing in the mind which was not previously in the 
senses, except the mind itself. Philosophy, properly so called, 
began with Pythagoras. Pie saw that the mind, in the common 
sense of the word, was itself a fact, that there was something 
in the mind not individual ; this was the pure reason, something 
in which we are^ not which is in usJ^ 



" Socrates seems to have been continually oscillating between 
the good and the useful" 



" To most men, experience is like the stern lights of a ship, 
which illumine only the track it has passed." 



'' On William Smith, of Norwich, asking me what I thought 
of the Monthly Eeview or Magazine, and of Dr. Aikin, its 
editor, I was provoked, by his evident wish that I should say 
something in its favour, to reply, — ' That all men of science or 
literature could attest that the one was a void Aikin, and the 
other an aching void.' " 



LETTERS, ETC. 75 

LETTER XIY. 

My very dear Friend, Nov. 27, 1820. 

I have been more than usually unwell, with great depres- 
sion of spirits, loss of appetite, frequent sickness, and a harassing 
pain in my left knee ; and at the same time anxious to preclude, 
as much as I can, the ill effects of poor J.'s procrastination — 
indolence it is not, for he is busy enough in his own way, and 
rapidly bringing together materials for his future credit as a 
man of letters and a poet, but shrinking from all things con- 
nected with painful associations, and of that morbid tempera- 
ment, which I too well understand, that renders what would 
be motives for men in general, narcotics for him, in exact 
proportion to their strength; and this I could only do by 
taking on myself as much of the document writing as was 
contris^able. Besides this, I have latterly felt increasingly 
anxious to avail myself of every moment that ill health left me, 
to get forward with ray Logic and with my '' Assertion of 
Eeligion.^' 

iSTay, foolish though it be, I cannot prevent my mind from 
being affected by the alarming state of public affairs, and, as it 
appears to me, the want of stable principle even in the chiefs of 
the party that seem to feel aright, yet chiiTiip like crickets in 
warmth mthout light. 

The consequence of all this is, that I not only have deferred 
writing to you, but have played the procrastinator with myself, 
even in giving attention to your very interesting letter. For 
minor things your kindness and kind remembrances are so 
habitual, that my acknovrledgments you cannot but take for 
granted. Mr. Gillman has been ill ; Mrs. Gillman — and this 
leads me to the pailiculai^ object of this letter — expresses aloud 
and earnestly v/hat I feel no less, her uneasiness that three 
w^eeks have passed, and we have not had the comfort of seeing 
you. Do come up w^hen you can, mth justice to yourself and 
other connections, for it is a great comfort to me ; something, I 



76 LETTERS, ETC. 

trust, I shall have to show you. A note of warning from one 
who has been a true but unheard prophet to my countrymen 
for five-and-twenty years. 

May God bless you, my dear friend, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



As I do not intend that these brief notices shall form any 
consecutive narrative of the events in the life of the writer, 
any farther than the letters may contain allusions to them, the 
life itself being, I hope, soon to make its appearance from the 
pen of his best friend, I shall content myself with the insertion of 
the following sonnet ; it is well worthy a place in future editions. 
The second sonnet I have found on a detached piece of paper, 
without note or observation. How it came into my possession 
I ha 70 now forgotten, though I have some faint impression that 
I wi'ote it down from dictation, and that it was the transcript of 
an early, a very early sonnet, ^vritten probably at the time 
when the author's heart, as well as his head, was with Spinosa. 

FAREWELL TO LOVE. 

Farewell, sweet Love ! yet blame you not my trutli ; 

More fondly ne'er did mother eye her child 
Than I your form : yours were my hopes of youth 

And as you shaped my thoughts I sighed or smiled. 
While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving 

To pleasure's secret haunt, and some apart 
Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving, 

To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart. 
And when I met the maid that realised 

Your fair creations, and had won her kindness, 
Say, hut for her if aught in earth I prized I 

Your dreams alone I dreamt, and caught your blindness. 
grief I— but farewell, Love ! I will go play me 

With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me. 

TO NATURE. 
It may indeed be phantasy, when I 
Essay to draw from all created things 
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings ; 
And trace, in leaves and flowers that round me lie, 



LETTERS, ETC. 77 

Lessons of love and earnest piety. 

So let it be ; and if the wide world rings 

In mock of this belief, it brings 

Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity. 

So will I build my altar in the fields, 

And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, 

And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields, 

Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee, 

Thee only God ! and thou shalt not despise 

EyeiL me, the priest of this poor sacrifice. 



LETTER XV. 

My DEAR YOUNG Friend, January ^ 1821. 

The only impression left by you on my mind is an 
increased desire to see you again, and at shorter intervals. 
Were you my son by nature, I could not hold you dearer, or 
more earnestly desire to retain you the adopted of whatever 
within me will remain, when the dross and alloy of infirmity 
shall have been purged away. I feel the most entire confidence 
that no prosperous change of my outward circumstances would 
add to J owe faith in the sincerity of this assm^ance; still, however, 
the average of men being what it is, and it being neither possible 
nor desirable to be fully conscious in our understanding of the 
habits of thinking and judging in the world around us, and yet 
to be wholly impassive and unaffected by them in our feelings, 
it would endear and give a new value to an honourable compe- 
tence, that I should be able to evince the true nature and degree 
of my esteem and attachment beyond the suspicion even of the 
sordid, and separate from all that is accidental or adventitious. 
But yet the friendship I feel for you is so genial a warmth, and 
blends so undistinguishably with my affections, is so perfectly 
one of the family in the household of love, that I would not be 
otherwise than obliged to you : and God is my witness, that 
my wish for an easier and less emban^assed lot is chiefly 



78 

(I thing I might have said exclusively) grounded on the deep 
conviction, that exposed to a less bleak aspect I should bring 
forth floYs^ers and fruits both more abundant and more worthy 
of the unexampled kindness of jour faith in me. Interpreting 
the " wine'' and the '^ ivy garland'' as figures of poetry signi- 
fying competence, and the removal of the petty needs of the 
body that plug up the pipes of the playing fountain (and 
such it is too well known was the intent and meaning of the 
hardly used poet), and oh ! how often, when my heart has 
begun to swell from the genial warmth of thought, as our 
northern lakes from the (so called) bottom winds, when all 
above and around is stillness and sunshine — how often have 
I repeated in my own name the sweet stanza of Edmund 
Spenser : — 

'' Thou kenst not, Percie, how the rhyme should rage, 

O ! if my temples were bedewed with wine, 

And girt in garlands of wild ivy twine ; 

How I could rear the muse on stately stage, 

And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine 

With queint Bellona in her equipage.'' 

Eead what follows as you would a note at the bottom of a 
page. 

" But ah ! Mecsenas is y wrapt in clay, and great Augustus long 
ago is dead." 

(This is a natural sigh, and natural too is the reflection that 

follows.) 

" And if that any buds of poesy 
Yet of the old stock 'gin to shoot again, 
'Tis or self-lost the woridHng's meed to gain, 
And with the rest to breathe its ribauldry, 
Or as it sprung it wither must again ; 
Tom Piper makes them better melody.'' 

But though natural, the complaint is not equally philoso- 
phical, were it only on this account, — that I know of no age 
in which the same has not been advanced, and with the 



LETTERS, ETC. 79 

same grounds. Nay, I retract ; there never was a time in 
which the complaint would be so little wise, though perhaps 
none in which the fact is more prominent. Neither philo- 
sophy nor poetry ever did, nor as long as they are terms 
of comparative excellence and contradistinction, ever can be 
popular^ nor honoured with the praise and favour of contem- 
poraries. But, on the other hand, there never was a time in 
which either books, that were held for excellent as poetic or 
philosophic, had so extensive and rapid a sale, or men reputed 
poets and philosophers of a high rank were so much looked up 
to in society, or so munificently, almost profusely, revrarded. 
Walter Scott's poems and novels (except ontythe two wretched 
abortions, Ivanhoe and the Bride of Eavensmuir, or whatever 
its name miay be) su/pply both instance and solution of the 
present conditions and components of popularity, viz. to amuse 
without requiring any effort of thought, and without exciting 
any deep emotion. The age seems soi^e from excess of stimu- 
lation, just as, a day or two after a thonmgh debauch and long 
sustained drinking match, a man feels all over like a bruise. 
Even to admire otherwise than on the whole^ and where '^ I ad- 
mire'' is but a synonym for '^ I remember I liked it veiy much 
lohen I was reading il^^ is too much an effort, would be too 
disquieting an emotion. Compare Waverley, Guy Mannering, 
and Co., mth works that had an immediate run in the last 
generation, Tristram Shandy, Eoderick Eandom, Sir Charles 
Grandison, Clarissa Harlowe, and Tom Jones (all which became 
popular as soon as published, and therefore instances fairly in 
point), and you will be convinced that the difference of taste is 
real, and not any fancy or croaking of my own. 

But enough of these generals. It was my purpose to open 
myself out to you in detail. My health, I have reason to 
believe, is so intimately connected with the state of my spirits, 
and these again so dependent on my thoughts, prospective and 
retrospective, that I should not doubt the being favoured with 
a sufficiency for my noblest undertaking, had I the ease of heart 



80 

requisite for the necessary abstraction of the thoughts, and 
such a reprieve from the goading of the immediate exigencies 
as might make tranquillity possible. But, alas ! I know by 
experience (and the knowledge is not the less because the 
regret is not unmixed with self-blame, and the consciousness of 
want of exertion and fortitude), that my health will continue to 
decline, as long as the pain from reviewing the barrenness of 
the past is great in an inverse proportion to any rational anti- 
cipations of the future. As I now am, however, from five to 
six hours devoted to actual writing and composition in the day 
is the utmost that my strength, not to speak of my nervous 
system, v/ill permit ; and the invasions on this portion of my 
time from applications, often of the most senseless kind, are 
such and so many as to be almost as ludicrous even to myself 
as they are vexatious. In less than a week I have not seldom 
received half-a-dozen packets or parcels, of works printed or 
manuscript, urgently requesting my candid judgment^ or my 
correcting hand. Add to these, letters from lords and ladies, 
urging me to write reviews or puffs of heaven-born geniuses, 
whose whole merit consists in being ploughmen or shoemakers. 
Ditto from actors ; entreaties for money, or recommendations 
to publishers, from ushers out of place, &c. &c. ; and to me^ 
who have neither interest, influence, nor money, and, what is 
still more apropos^ can neither bring myself to tell smooth 
falsehoods nor harsh truths, and, in the struggle, too often do 
both in the anxiety to do neither. — I have already the written 
materials and contents, requiring only to be put together, from 
the loose papers and commonplace or memorandum books, and 
needing no other change, whether of omission, addition, or cor- 
rection, than the mere act of arranging, and the opportunity of 
seeing the whole collectively bring with them of com-se, — I. 
Characteristics of Shakspeare's Dramatic Works, with a Critical 
Eeview of each Play ; together with a relative and compara- 
tive Critique on the kind and degree of the Merits and Demerits 
of the Dramatic Works of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, 



LETTERS, ETC. 81 

and Massinger. The History of the English Drama; the 
accidental advantages it afforded to Shakspeare^ mthout in the 
least detracting from the perfect originality or proper creation 
of the Shakspearian Drama ; the contradistinction of the latter 
from the Greek Drama, and its still remaining uniqueness^ with 
the causes of this, from the combined influences of Shakspeare 
himself, as man, poet, philosopher, and finally, by conjimction of 
all these, dramatic poet ; and of the age, events, manners, and 
state of the English language. This work, with every art of 
compression, amounts to three volumes of about five hundred 
pages each. — II. Philosophical Analysis of the Genius and 
Works of Dante, Spenser, Milton, Cervantes, and Calderon, 
with similar, but more compressed Criticisms on Chaucer, 
Ariosto, Donne, Rabelais, and others, during the predominance 
of the Romantic Poetry. In one large volume. — These two 
works mil, I flatter myself, form a complete code of the prin- 
ciples of judgment and feeling applied to Works of Taste ; and 
not of Poetry only, but of Poesy in aU its forms. Painting, 
Statuary, Music, &c. &c. — III. The History of Philosophy 
considered as a Tendency of the Human Mind to exhibit the 
Powers of the Human Reason, to discover by its o^vn Strength 
the Origin and Laws of Man and the AYorld from Pytha- 
goras to Locke and Condillac. Two volumes. — TV. Letters 
on the Old and ^N^ew Testament, and on the Doctrine and 
Principles held in common by the Fathers and Founders of 
the Reformation, addressed to a Candidate for Holy Orders ; 
including Advice on the Plan and Subjects of Preaching, 
proper to a Minister of the Established Chmxh. 

To the completion of these four works I have literally 
nothing more to do than to transcribe ; but, as I before hinted, 
from so many scraps and Sihylline leaves, including margins of 
books and blank pages, that, unfortunately, I must be my own 
scribe, and not done by m^^self, they will be all but lost ; or 
perhaps (as has been too often the case already) fm-nish feathers 
for the caps of others ; some for this purpose^ and some to plume 

6 



82 LETTERS, ETC. 

the arrows of detraction, to be let fly against the luckless bird 
from whom they had been plucked or moulted. 

In addition to these — of my great work, to the preparation 
of which more than twenty years of my life have been devoted, 
and on which my hopes of extensive and permanent utility, of 
fame, in the noblest * sense of the word, mainly rest — that, by 
which I might, 

** As now by thee, by all the good be known, 

When this weak frame lies moulder'd in the grave, 
Which self-surviving I might call my own, 
Which Folly cannot mar, nor Hate deprave — 
The incense of those powers, which, risen in flame, 
Might make me dear to Him from whom they came.'* 

* Turn to Milton's Lycidas, sixth stanza — 

'' Alas ! what boots it with incessant care 
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, 
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? 
Were it not better done as others use, 
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade. 
Or with the tangles of Nesera's hair ? 
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
(That last infirmity of noble mind) 
To scorn delights and live laborious days ; 
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, 
And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears. 
And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise, 
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears ; 
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
Nor on the glistering foil 
Set off to the world, nor in broad Rumour lies, 
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, 
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; 
As he pronounces lastly in each deed, 
Of so much fame in heav'n expect thy meed." 

The sweetest music does not fall sweeter on my ear than this stanza 
on both mind and ear, as often as I repeat it aloud. 



LETTERS, ETC. 83 

Of this work, to which all my other writings (unless I except 
my Poems, and these I can exclude in part only) are intro- 
ductory and preparative ; and the result of which (if the pre- 
mises he, as I with the most tranquil assurance, am convinced 
they are — insubvertible, the deductions legitimate, and the 
conclusions commensurate, and only commensurate, with both), 
must finally be a revolution of all that has been called Philosophy 
or Metaphysics in England and France since the era of the com- 
mencing predominance of the mechanical system at the resto- 
ration of our second Charles, and with this the present fashion- 
able views, not only of religion, morals, and politics, but even 
of the modern physics and physiology. You will not blame 
the earnestness of my expressions, nor the high importance 
which I attach to this work; for how, with less noble objects, 
and less faith in their attainment, could I stand acquitted of 
folly, and abuse of time, talents, and learning, in a labour of 
three-fourths of my intellectual life? Of this work, something 
more than a volume has been dictated by me, so as to exist fit 
for the press, to my friend and enlightened pupil, Mr. Green ; 
and more than as much again would have been evolved and 
delivered to paper, but that, for the last six or eight months, I 
have been compelled to break off our weekly meeting, from the 
necessity of writing (alas I alas ! of attempting to w^ite) for 
purposes, and on the subjects of the passing day. — Of my 
poetic works, I would fain finish the Christabel. Alas ! for 
the proud time when I planned, when I had present to my 
mind, the materials, as well as the scheme, of the Hymns 
entitled Spirit, Sun, Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Man : and 
the Epic Poem on — what still appears to me the one only fit 
subject remaining for an Epic Poem — Jerusalem besieged and 
destroyed by Titus. 

And here comes, my dear friend — here comxcs my sorrow and 
my weakness, my grievance and my confession. Anxious to 
perform the duties of the day arising out of the wants of the 
day, these wants, too, presenting themselves in the most 



84 LETTERS, ETC. 

painful of all forms, — that of a debt owing to those who will not 
exact itj and yet need its payment, and the delay, the long 
(not live-long but death-loixg) behind-hand of my accounts to 
friends, whose utmost care and frugality on the one side, and 
industry on the other, the wife's management and the husband^s 
assiduity are put in requisition to make both ends meet, I am 
at once forbidden to attempt, and too perplexed earnestly to 
pursue, the accomplishment of the works worthy of me, those 
I mean above enumerated, — even if, savagely as I have been 
injured by one of the two influensive Eeviews, and with more 
effective enmity undermined by the utter silence or occasional 
detractive compliments of the other,* I had the probable 
chance of disposing of them to the booksellers, so as even to 
liquidate my mere boarding accounts during the time expended 
in the transcription, arrangement, and proof correction. And 
yet, on the other hand, my heart and mind are for ever recur- 
ring to them. Yes, my conscience forces me to plead guilty, 
I have only by fits and starts even prayed. I have not 
prevailed on myself to pray to God in sincerity and entireness 
for the fortitude that might enable me to resign myself to the 
abandonment of all my life's best hopes, to say boldly to 
myself, — '' Gifted with powers confessedly above mediocrity, 
aided by an education, of which, no less from almost un- 
exampled hardships and sufferings than from manifold and 
peculiar advantages, I have never yet found a parallel, I have 
devoted myself to a life of unintermitted reading, thinking, 
meditating, and observing. I have not only sacrificed all 
worldly prospects of wealth and advancement, but have in my 
inmost soul stood aloof from temporary reputation. In con- 
sequence of these toils and this self-dedication, I possess a 



* Neither my Literary Life (2 vols.), nor Sibylline Leaves (1 vol.), 
nor Friend (3 vols.), nor Lay Sermons, nor Zapolya,nor Christabel, 
have ever been noticed by the Quarterly Review, of which Southey 
is yet the main support. 



85 

calm and clear cousciousness, that in many and most Important 
departments of trutli and beauty I have outstrode my con- 
temporaries — those at least of highest name *, that the number 
of my printed works bears witness that I have not been idle, 
and the seldom acknowledged, but strictly proveahle, effects 
of my labom's appropriated to the immediate welfare of my 
age in the Morning Post before and during the peace of Amiens, 
in the Courier afterwards, and in the series and various subjects 
of my lectures at Bristol and at the Eoyal and Surrey Institu- 
tions, in Fetter-lane, at Willis's Rooms, and at the Crown and 
Anchor (add to which the mdimited freedom of my communi- 
cations in colloquial life), may surely be allowed as evidence 
that I have not been useless in my generation. But, from 
circumstances, the main portion of my harvest is still on the 
ground, ripe indeed, and only waiting, a few for the sickle, 
but a large part only for the sheaving, and carting, and hous- 
ing ; but from all this I must turn away, must let them rot as 
they lie, and be as though they never had been, for I must go 
and gather blackberries and earth-nuts, or pick mushrooms 
and gild oak-apples for the palates and fancies of chance 
customers. I must abrogate the name of philosopher and 
poet, and scribble as fast as I can, and with as little thought 
as I can, for Blackwood's Magazine, or as I have been em- 
ployed for the last days, in writing MS. sermons for lazy 
clergymen, who stipulate that the composition must not be 
more than respectable, for fear they should be desired to publish 
the visitation sermon !" This I have not yet had courage to 
do. My soul sickens and my heart sinks ; and thus, oscillating 
between both, I do neither, neither as it ought to be done, or 
to any profitable end. If I v/ere to detail only the various, 
I might say capricious, interruptions that have prevented the 
finishing of this very scrawl, begun on the very day I received 
your last kind letter, you would need no other illustrations. 

Now I see but one possible plan of rescuing my permanent 
utility. It is briefly this and plainly. For what we struggle 



86 LETTERS, ETC. 

with inwardly, we find at least easiest to holt ouf^ namely — 
that of engaging from the circle of those who think respectfully 
and hope highly of my powers and attainments a yearly smii, 
for three or four years, adequate to my actual support, with 
such comforts and decencies of appearance as my health and 
habits have made necessaries, so that my mind maybe unanxious 
as far as the present time is concerned ; that thus I should 
stand both enabled and pledged to begin with some one work 
of these above mentioned, and for two-thirds of my whole time 
to devote myself to this exclusively till finished, to take the 
chance of its success by the best mode of publication that 
would involve me in no risk, then to proceed with the next, 
and so on till the works above mentioned as already in full 
material existence should be reduced into formal and actual 
being ; while in the remaining third of my time I might go on 
maturing and completing my great work, and (for if but easy 
in mind, I have no doubt either of the re-awakening power or of 
the kindling inclination), and my Christabel, and what else the 
happier hoar might inspire — and without inspiration a barrel- 
organ may be played right deftly ; but 

" All otherwise the state oi poet stands ; 
For lordly want is such a tyrant fell, 
That where he rules all power he doth expel. 
The vaunted verse a vacant head demands, 
Ne wont with crabbed Care the muses dwell : 
Unwisely weaves lolio takes two wehs in hand ! '' 

Now Mr. Green has offered to contribute from £30 to £40 
yearly, for three or four years ; my young friend and pupil, 
the son of one of my dearest old friends, £50 ; and I think that 
from £10 to £20 I could rely upon from another. The sum 
required would be about £200, to be repaid, of course, should 
the disposal or sale, and as far as the disposal and sale, of my 
writings produce the means, 

I have thus placed before you at large, wanderingly, as well 
as diffusely, the statement which I am inclined to send in a 



LETTERS, ETC. 87 

compressed form to a few of those of whose kind dispositions 
towards me I have received assm-ances, — and to their interest 
and influence I must leave it — anxious, however, before I do this, 
to learn from you yom^ very, very inmost feeling and judgment 
as to the previous questions. Am I entitled, have I earned 
a right to do this ? Can I do it without moral degradation ? 
and, lastly, can it be done without loss of character in the eyes 
of my acquaintance, and of my fiiends' acquaintance, who may 
have been informed of the circumstances ? That, if attempted 
at all, it will be attempted in such a way, and that such persons 
only will be spoken to, as will not expose me to indelicate 
rebuffs to be afterwards matter of gossip, I know those, to 
whom I shall entrust the statement, too well to be much 
alarmed about. 

Pray let me either see or hear from you as soon as possible ; 
for, indeed and indeed, it is no inconsiderable accession to the 
pleasure I anticipate from disembarrassment, that you would 
have to contemplate in a more gracious f<)rm, and in a more 
ebullient play of the inward fountain, the mind and manners of, 
My dear friend. 
Your obliged and very affectionate fr'iend, 

S. T. COLERIDaE. 

T. Allsop, Esq. 



This is one of the most beautiful, the most interesting and, in 
many respects, the most affecting letter I have preserved ; it 
is a letter which no one but my lamented friend could have 
written. 

I am precluded by the determination with which I set out 
(not to attach blame to persons farther than blame is attributed 
by the writer, or to be clearly inferred from the letters or 
conversations themselves,) fr'om sundry explanations and 
strictures which constantly occur to me as often as I peruse 
and re-peruse this letter. The condition here so fully laid open 
has been in all a^es that of the seekers after truth for its own 



88 LETTERS, ETC. 

sake ; and exclusively and necessarily arises from those con- 
ditions of mind which render such a course possible. Viewing 
man, as far as the facts established as truths^ and the truths which 
result from antecedent truth, enable us to speak on this matter, 
as subject in all his actions, or rather in the will in which they 
originate, to external and internal influences which exist 
antecedent to, and independent of, his wdll, I cannot hesitate 
to declare my calm and settled opinion that it is unjust to blame 
or to praise, or if it could be just, only so as applied to the 
cause, not to the necessary effect. Acting upon these views, it 
w^ould ill accord with my fixed purpose, if I should blame 
individuals or systems, or waste time in seeking for proximate 
or remote causes. All that I have permitted myself is, to 
narrate, and sometimes to regret results ; regrets which to me, 
and for me, are as necessary as the results themselves. 

No blame, therefore, do I attach to the parties w^ho per- 
mitted such an appeal, from such a man, to strangers. Un- 
worthy as the motives have been termed, by which sundry 
persons were considered to be influenced, I am conscious that 
for them no other course was possible, I cannot call either 
their motives or their actions evil ; it w^ould be untrue if I, 
wdth the settled convictions at which I have arrived, were so 
to characterise them. It will be sufficient for the future that 
w^e see what physical suffering and what mental pain were the 
results. It is only when we apply the experience of the past 
to the similar or like events of the present, that w^e add to the 
su-m and amount of permanent pleasurable existence. If a 
thousandth part of the time consumed in regulating actions 
had been devoted to creating good motives^ if but a millionth 
part of the time devoted to the punishment of crime had been 
bestowed in a right direction, crime, in the form at least in 
which it now exists, would have been impossible. If the less 
ccupied, instead of busying themselves wath spiritual respon- 
sibility, respecting which nothing is or can certainly he known, 
had applied themselves to the question of moral and physical 



LETTERS, ETC. 89 

responsibility, the lamentable ignorance now prevailing, an 
ignorance which is synonymous with moral and physical 
degi'adation, could not have continued to this hour. If, instead 
of blaming men for what they are, and are made to 6e, we 
occupied and interested om^selves with, earnest inquiries into 
the causes of the evils we deplore, vA\h a view to their removal, 
it cannot be doubted that this real labour of love, if carried on 
with and through the spirit of love, would in its very endeavour 
include much of the good sought to be obtained. To me it 
seems that the greatest amount of benefit will result from the 
labom's or the exertions of those, who unite the good to others 
with that which is — has been made — -pleasurable to themselves ; 
from those who seek to make what is genial and joyous to 
themselves more genial and more joyous to others. This is a 
labour in which not merely some favourite crochet, some 
abstract opinion, or even sincere and honest convictions are 
engaged ; it is one in which the best, the purest, the highest 
sympathies of our nature are enUsted in the service, and in the 
promotion of those enjoyments, and of those practical occupa- 
tions from which our own well-being has resulted, or mth 
which it has been associated.* 

* As examples of the success attending the removal of the exciting 
causes of vice or crime, instead of seeking a cure by punishment, I 
should wish to direct all unprejudiced minds to the results of the sys- 
tem successfully practised by the celebrated Eobert Owen, at New 
Lanark, founded upon the eternal truth, that men, and, much more, 
children take their character from the surrounding influences. The 
result of Mr. Owen's benevolent exertions has proved what can be 
done with a vicious population. The quotation which follows, though 
not so well known as it deserves, will show what can be effected by a 
benevolent and decided man with a vicious adult population. 

To M. Victor de Tract. 

''Malwa, 29tJi March, 1832. 

'' During a short stay in Adjmeer, I contrived to ^asit the Mhair- 

wanah, the former Abruzzi of Kajpootana. It was well worth riding 

eighty-four miles. I saw a country whose inhabitants, since an im- 



90 

Mucli that is now sought to be attained is very pleasant, 
nay, very desirable, but the means by which it is sought are 
not practicable, the harmonious combinations, to any adequate 
extent, are not yet possible ; and all endeavours to force the 

memorial time, had never had any other means of existence but 
plunder in the adjacent plains, a people of murderers ; now changed 
into a quiet, industrious, and happy ^qo^Iq of shepherds and cultivators. 
Ko Rajpoot chiefs, no Mogul emperors, had ever been able to subdue 
them ; fourteen years ago everything was to be done with them, and 
in seven years the change was effected. I will add, that Major Hall 
has accomplished this admirable social experiment without taking a 
single life. 

" The very worst characters were secured, confined, or put in irons 
to work on the roads. Those who had lived long by the sword, 
without however becoming notorious for their cruelty, were made 
soldiers ; in that capacity they became the keepers of their former 
associates, and often of their chiefs ; and the rest of the population 
was gained to the plough. Female infanticide was a prevalent prac- 
tice with the Mhairs, and generally throughout Eajpootana ; and now 
female casualties do not exceed male casualties ; a proof that the 
bloody practice has been abandoned ; and scarcely has a man been 
punished. Major Hall did not punish the offenders ; he removed the 
cause of the crime, and made the crime useless, even injurious to the 
offender, and it was never more committed. 

'' Major Hall has shown me the corps he raised from these former 
savages, and I have seen none in India in a higher state of discipline. 
He was justly proud of his good work, and spared no trouble that I 
might see it thoroughly. Upwards of a hundred villagers were sum- 
moned from the neighbouring hamlets ; I conversed with them on 
their former mode of life, and of their present avocations. Most of 
these men had shed blood. They told me they knew not any other 
mode of life : it Avas a most miserable one by their account ; they were 
naked and starving. 

^' Now, poor as is the soil of their small valleys, and barren their 
hills, every hand being set at work, there is plenty of clothes, of food; 
and so sensible are they of the immense benefit conferred by the 
British government, that willingly they pay to it already 500,000 
francs, which they increase every year as the national wealth admits 
of it. 

'' Often I had thought that gentle means would prove inadequate 



91 

time of action liave liitlierto failed, o^vving to the time being 
unpropitious, or to tlie means being unsuitable ; or, still more, 
from the great, the fatal mistake, a mistake to vv^hich benevo- 
lent natures are too liable, that of mistaking the changed con- 
victions of the mind for an equally decided and simultaneous 
change in the habits or actions. From those men the highest 
good is to be hoped ^' who have encouraged the sjTupathetic 
passions until they have become irresistible habits, and made 
their duty a necessary part of their self-interest ; who derive 
their most exquisite pleasures from the contemplation of pos- 
sible perfection, and proportionate pain from the perception of 
existing depravation. Accustomed to regard all the affairs of 
man as a process, they never hurr}^ and they never pause. 
Theirs is not that twilight of political knowledge which gives 
us just Kght enough to place one foot before the other ; as they 
advance, the scene still opens upon them, and they press right 
onward with a vast and various landscape of existence around 
them. Internal calmness and energy mark all their actions. 
Convinced that vice originates not in the man, but in the sm^- 
rounding circumstances; not in the heart, but in the under- 
standing, they are hopeless concerning no one — to correct a 
vice or generate a virtuous conduct they pollute not their hands 
with the scourge of coercion ; but by endeavom-ing to alter the 
circumstances would remove, or by strengthening the intellect 
disarm, temptation. These soul-ennobling views bestow the 
virtues they anticipate. 

"That general illumination should precede revolution is a 

to the task of breaking-iu populations addicted for ages to a most 
savage hfe, such as the Greeks, for instance. Yet the Klephts were 
but lambs compared to the Mhairs, and the Mhairs in a few years 
have become an industrious, a laborious, and well-behaved people. 

" I see M. Capo d'Istria has been murdered. I wish Major Hall 
were his successor, for now I have the greatest confidence in the 
efficacy of gentle means." 

Jaquemonfs Letters » 



92 LETTERS, ETC. 

truth as obvious as that the vessel should be cleansed before 
we fill it with a pure liquor. But the mode of diffusing it is 
not discoverable with equal facility. We certainly should 
never attempt to make proselytes by appeals to the seMsh 
feeling, and consequently should plead for the oppressed, not* 
to them. Godwin considers private societies as the sphere of 
real utility ; that (each one illuminating those immediately 
below him) truth by a gradual descent may at last reach the 
lowest order. But this is rather plausible than just or practi- 
cable. Society, as at present constituted, does not resemble a 
chain that ascends in a continuity of links ; alas ! between the 
parlom- and the kitchen, the tap and the coffee-room, there is a 
gulf that may not be passed. He would appear to me to have 
adopted the best as well as the most benevolent mode of dif- 
fusing truth, who, uniting the zeal of the methodist with the 
views of the philosopher, should be personally among the 
poor, and teach them their duties in order that he may render 
them susceptible of their rights.'^ 

The present tendencies are, I believe, adverse to the attain- 
ment of any high, pure, or lasting advantage, unless it be 
from the necessary re-action or recoil. I can conceive of no 
blasphemy more vile or self-degrading, than that which con- 
templates the degradation of the moral being into a political 
or social subjection to combinations, which, if they were as 
perfect and as practical as they are crude and impossible, would 
end in solving, by proving, the depravity of human nature. 

What is to be said of a science (so called), which tends to 
the destruction of all that has hitherto been associated with 
the pure in thought and act, and which has declared, through 

* I consider hoth necessary, nay, desirable. Would pleading for 
rights withheld have procured their restoration, if also the people had 
not been aroused by direct appeals to their sense of wrong ? Pleading 
to the oppressed alone would be of terrific danger, did not a sense of 
justice aided by personal fears create advocates, who end in becoming 
mediators. 



LETTERS, ETC. 93 

one of the most favoured and influential of its organs, that it 
would be of the highest possible advantage to Great Britain, if 
its country were wholly destroyed by a volcano, so that its 
factories and towns might be compelled to have recourse to 
other lands for food, and thus sell sundry additional bales of 
cotton or pigs of iron ?* 

Well might Frederic of Prussia say, if it were wished 
effectually to ruin a province or a kingdom, the surest and 
swiftest way would be to appoint an economist the adminis- 
trator. To believe that this most pernicious of all systems 
can long exist ; to think that this faith in mechanics, mental 
and distributive, could long continue, except as a preparative 
to something higher or better, or as a condition of a quick and 
complete re -action, would for me sadden the earth around, and 
wither the very grass in the fields. 

'^ Toy-bewitched, 
Made blind by lusts, disherited of soul. 
No common centre Man, no common sire 
Knoweth ! A sordid solitary thing, 
'Mid countless brethren with a lonely heart 
Through courts and cities the smooth savage roams 
Feeling himself, his own low Self, the whole ; 
When he by sacred sympathy might make 



* This writer has, in the very article referred to, strangely verified 
the passage in the preceding letter, in which my excellent friend 
states that his MS. suggestions have been made, some to furnish 
feathers for the caps of others, and some for the purpose of defaming 
him from whom they were stolen. This writer has done both. He 
has most grossly defamed the admirable man whom he was incapable 
of estimating or appreciating, and in the last number of his work 
has appropriated some of the most striking of Coleridge's views, even 
to his very illustrations. This writer, formerly a butcher, a man- 
butcher (I say this illustratively, not disparagingly), would be more 
innocently employed in destroying life than in attempting to mutilate 
the reputation of the great dead. 



94 LETTERS, ETC. 

The whole one self! Self, that no alien knows ! 
Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel ! 
Self, spreading still I Oblivious of its own, 
Yet all of all possessing 1 " 

Beligious Musings, p. 90-1. 

To yoUj my dearest children, and to those not less dear, because 
equally docile and ingenuous, whom only, or chiefly, I desire 
as readers, I would as the result of my experience say, — 
cultivate all the social relations, all the recognised modes of 
kindly intercourse and intercommunication ; yet alw^ays pre- 
serving, even in moments of the most entire interfusion of mind 
and the affections, a consciousness and presence of identity, 
which alone gives value to this sympathy and sympathetic 
union. So also I would have you to consider this self as 
cultivable, as deriving its chiefest and highest value from its 
relation to and dependence upon congenial natures, which by a 
natural attraction and harmony are dravv^n together, and respond 
to each other. 

To be conscious of existence only, as its sorrows are shared 
or its pleasures enhanced by affection and love in its nobler 
sense, appears the highest condition of humanity, and this I 
hold to be attainable. To this I seek to approximate; and 
this, my dearest friends, every one may to some considerable 
extent arrive at, who, ^^earning after the pure and imearthly, 

" Shall, when brought 
Among the tasks of real life, have wrought 
Upon the plan that pleased his child-like thought ; 
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, 
But makes his moral being his prime care, 
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait 
For wealth or honours, or for worldly state ; 
Whom they must follow, on whose head must fall. 
Like showers of manna, if they come at all. 
His is a soul, whose master-bias leans 
To home-felt pleasures and to gentle scenes ; 
Sweet images ! which, wheresoe'er he be, 
Are at his heart ; and such fidelity 



LETTERS, ETC. 95 

It is his darling passion to approve, 
More brave for tMs — that he has much to love. 
'Tis, finally, the man who, lifted high, 
Conspicuous o'' ject in a nation's eye, 
Or left unthought on in ohscuriti/y 
Who with a toward or untoward lot, 
Prosperous or adverse, to Ms wish or noty 
Plays in the many games of life that one 
Where vjhat he most doth value must he won^ 



LETTEE XYI. 

My deaeest Friend, Blandford-place^ March 1st, 1821. 

God bless YOU, and all who are dear and near to yon ! but as 
to your pens, they seem to have been plucked froin the deviVs 
pinions, and slit and shaped by the blunt edge of the broad 
sprays of his antlers. Of the ink {i.e. your inkstand), it would 
be base to complain. I hate abusing folks in their absence. Do 
you know, my dear friend, that having sundry little snug 
superstitions of my own, I shrewdly suspect that whimsical 
ware of that sort is connected with the state and garniture of 
your paper-staining machinery. — Is it so ? Well, I have seen 
Mm-ray, and he has been civil, I may say kind, in his manners. 
Is this your knock ? — Is it you on the stairs ? — Xo. I 
explained my full purpose to him, namely, — that he should 
take me and my concerns, past and futm-e, for print and 
reprint, under his umbrageous foliage, though the original 
name of his great predecessor in the patronage of genius, who 
gave the name of Augustan to all happy epochs — Octavius 
would be more appropriate — and he promises, — ccBtera desunt. 



It was about this time that I met with an odd volume of 
the Tatler, during a forced stay at a remote and obscure inn* 
in the wilds of Kinder Scout. 

* Those who have been kept at a cheerless inn in a dreary countiy 
by continued rain in late autumn, without external resource or the 



96 

The book opened at a paper (one of Steele's) giving an 
account of the writer's meeting with an old friend, recalling to 
his memory their early intimacy, and the services he had 
rendered him in his courtship, the delightful pictures which 
he calls up of the youthful, animated, and happy lovers, which, 
with a felicit}^ peculiar to Steele, such was the fineness, the pure 
gold of his nature, he associates, rather than contrasts, with the 
quiet happiness, the full content and the still devotion (the 
heart-love), which makes an Elysium of a home in other respects 
only home-lj. 

This picture, yet I think one of the most pure and most 
delightful of that age, for it belongs in its manners and some 
of its accessories to the past century, I mentioned to Coleridge 
on my return, and had, as I expected, my pleasure repeated, 
deepened, and extended. It was a joy and ever new delight 
to listen to him on any congenial theme, on one congenial to 
you as well as to him, I was especially pleased to find that he 

means of communication, without books, and even without writing 
materials, — that is, without paper upon which to write, — need 
not be told hoiv delightful, what an event, it is to meet with a book, 
such as by a special providence is always discovered in these places 
when the powers are propitious, such as a stray volume of Sir Charles 
Grandison, which you will find at the Swan at Brecon ; an odd volume 
of the Tatler at the inn on Kinder Scout ; the fifth volume of Clarissa 
Harlowe at the inn at Lyndharst ; the Abelard and Heloise, an un do- 
mestic translation (which I hasten to recommend to my excellent 
friend, Charles Cowden Clark, to be immediately expurgated and 
made decent, and fit for introduction into seminaries, and into demure 
and orderly families), at the Crab and Lobster, Bonchurch ; to Bell's 
Luther's Table Talk, full of odd things, at Camps Inn, Ilfracombe ; 
the Athenian Oracle, containing many unnoticed contributions by 
Swift, at the Pelican, Speenhamland ; and last, because the most 
ungenial and most unseemly, Pamela, in one large volume, at the little 
inn at Bembridge Ledge or Point. To enjoy these you must be without 
any other resource, and the book, discovered after a long, and, as you 
begin to think, hopeless, search, must be one that you have read very 
early in youth, and of which you only retain very faint recollections. 



LETTERS, ETC. 97 

valued Steele, always my prime favourite, so much above 
Addison and the other essayists of that day ; he denied that 
Steele was, as he himself said in a pleasantry, " like a distressed 
prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid, and w^ho, 
once in possession, became sovereign." Addison was necessary 
to give variety to the papers, but in no other sense did he give 
value. Steele^ s papers are easily distinguished to this day by 
their pure humanity springing from the gentleness, the kind- 
ness of his heart. He dwelt with much unction on the cm-ious 
and instructive letters of Steele to his wife ; and vfith much 
approval on the manliness with which, in the first letters, he 
addressed the lady to whom he was afterwards united. He 
quoted the following as models of their kind, and w^orthy of 
especial admiration : — 

" As I know no reason why difference of sex should make our 
language to each other differ from the ordinary rules of right reason, 
I shall use plainness and sincerity in my discourse to you, as much 
as other lovers do perplexity and rapture. Instead of saying, ' 1 
shall die for you,' I profess I should be glad to lead my life with you. 
You are as beautiful, as witty, as prudent, and as good-humoured as 
any woman breathing ; but I regard all these excellences as you will 
please to direct them for my happiness or misery. With me, Madam, 
the only lasting motive to love is the hope of its becoming mutual. . . 
All great passion makes us dumb ; and the highest happiness, as well 
as the greatest grief, seizes us too violently to be expressed by words. 

... To know so much pleasure with so much innocence is, methinks, 
a satisfaction beyond the present condition of human life ; but the 
union of minds in pure affection is renewing the first state of man, 

. . . This is an unusual language to ladies ; but you have a mind 
above the giddy notions of a sex ensnared by flattery, and misled by 
a false and short adoration, into a solid and long contempt. Beauty 
palls in the possession ; but I love also your mind ; your soul is as 
dear to me as my own ; and if the advantage of a liberal education, 
some knowledge, and as much contempt of the world, joined mth 
endeavours towards a life of strict virtue and religion, can qualify me 
to raise new ideas in a breast so well disposed as yours is, our days 
will pass away with joy, and instead of introducing melancholy 
prospects of decay, give us hope of eternal youth in a better life. . . . 
Let us go on to make our regards to each other mutual and un- 

7 



98 

changeable ; that while the world around us is enchanted with the 
false satisfactions of vagrant desire, our persons may be shrines to 
each other, sacred to conjugal faith, unreserved confidence, and 
heavenly society.'^ 

Even when the extreme thrift of his wife — ^the necessary- 
result or reaction from the husband's improvidence — caused 
him uneasiness, his replies show the true gentleness of his 
nature : — 

'' I assure you, any disturbance between us is the greatest affliction 
to me imaginable. You talk of the judgment of the world ; I shall 
never govern my actions by it, but by the rules of morality and right 
reason. I love you better than the light of my eyes or the life-blood 
in my heart ; but you are also to understand, that neither my sight 
shall be so far enchanted, nor my affection so much master of me, as 
to make me forget our common interest. To attend my business as 
I ought, and improve my fortune, it is necessary that my time and 
my will should be under no direction but my own. . . . We must take 
our portion of life as it runs without repining. I consider that good 
nature, added to that beautiful form God has given you, would make 
a happiness too great for human life. . . . You may think what you 
please, but I know you have the best husband in the world in your 
aflfectionate 

'^ KicHARD Steele." 

This letter, written about a year after their marriage, seems 
to me calculated to appease any woman who was not both a 
shrew and a niggard. Careful attention to fortune, even if it 
exceeds its fit and just proportion, may, perhaps, be excusable 
in a man ; in a woman, this most unfeminine and ungentle 
property of niggardliness is most unseemly, even when 
redeemed, as it was not in this case, by an upheaped love and 
devotion to her admirable husband. 

'^ There are not words to express the tenderness I have for you. 
Love is too harsh a term for it ; but if you knew how my heart aches 
when you speak an unkind word to me, and springs with joy when 
you smile upon me, I am sure you would place your glory rather in 
preserving my happiness, like a good wife, than tormenting me, like 
a peevish beauty. Good Prue, write me word you shall be overjoyed 



LETTERS, ETC, 99 

at my return to you, and pity the figure I make when I pretend to 
resist you, by complying with my reasonable demands. . . . It is in 
no one's power but Prue's to make me constant in a regular course j 
therefore will not doubt but you will be very good-humoured and a 
constant feast to your affectionate husband. ... I send you seven 
pennyworths of walnuts at five a penny, which is the greatest proof 
I can give you at present of my being, with my whole heart, yours, 

''KicHAKD Steele. 
" P.S. — There are but twenty-nine walnuts." 



'' Dear, dear Prue, 

"Your pretty letter, and so much good nature and kindness, 
which I received yesterday, is a perfect pleasure to me. ... I am, 
dear Prue, a little in drink, but at all times 

" Your faithful husband, 

" ElCHAKD STEELEr^" 



'' Dear Prue, 

'' If you do not hear from me before three to-morrow afternoon, 
believe I am too fuddled to observe your orders ; but, however, know 
me to be 

" Your most faithful and affectionate 

" EicHARD Steele. 
'' I am very sick with too much wine last night." 

The last passage would, at the present time, be considered 
evidence of a vicious, degraded course of life, and therefore not 
confessed to a wife of whom the waiter w^as somewhat in awe. 
At that time drinking was held a mark of good fellowship, and 
was considered, as indeed it is, far more venial than the vices 
w^hich at present have usm^ped its place ; vices w^hich partake 
of the intense selfishness of this age of mechanical activity. 

With how sweet a grace does he address Lady Steele, after 
seven years' intimate communion ; and. with how much true 
delicacy does he dwell upon her homely virtues : virtues which, 
when they attain the great and highest aim of every right- 
minded woman, to make home cheerful and happy to her 



100 LETTERS, ETC. 

husband, are, beyond all others, pure and ennobling ; but m 
this case, that result was neither sought nor obtained. 
*' Madam, 

*' To have either wealth, wit or beauty, is generally a temptation 
to a woman to put an unreasonable value upon herself ; but with all 
these, in a degree which drew upon you the addresses of men of the 
amplest fortunes, you bestowed your person where you could have no 
expectations but from the gratitude of the receiver, though you knew 
he could exert that gratitude in no other returns but esteem and love. 
For which must I first thank you? for what you have denied yourself, 
or for what you have bestowed on me ? 

'' I owe to you, that for my sake you have overlooked the prospect 
of Kving in pomp and plenty, and I have not been circumspect enough 
to preserve you from care and sorrow. I will not dwell upon this 
particular ; you are so good a wife, that I know you think I rob you 
of more than I can give, when I say anything in your favour to my 
own disadvantage. 

'* Whoever should see or hear you, would think it were worth 
leaving all the world for you j while I, habitually possessed of that 
happiness, have been throwing away impotent endeavours for the rest 
of mankind, to the neglect of her for whom any other man, in his 
senses, would be apt to sacrifice everything else. 

" I know not by what unreasonable prepossession it is, but methinks 
there must be something austere to give authority to wisdom ; and I 
cannot account for having rallied many seasonable sentiments of 
yours, but that you are too beautiful to appear judicious. 

'' One may grow fond, but not wise, from what is said by so lovely 
a counsellor. Hard fate ! that you have been lessened by your per- 
fections, and lost power by your charms ! 

'* That ingenuous spirit in all your behaviour, that familiar grace 
in your words and actions, has for this seven years only inspired 
admiration and love ; but experience has taught me, the best counsel 
I ever have received has been pronounced by the fairest and softest 
lips, and convinced me that I am in you blest with a wise friend, as 
well as a charming mistress. 

'' Your mind shall no longer sufier by your person ; nor shall your 
eyes, for the future, dazzle me into a blindness towards your under- 
standing. I rejoice to show my esteem for you ; and must do you the 
justice to say, that there can be no virtue represented in the female 
world, which I have not known you exert, as far as the opportunities 
of your fortune have given you leave. Forgive me, that my heart 



101 

overflows with love and gratitude for daily instances of your prudent 
economy, tlie just disposition you make of your little affairs, your 
cheerfulness in dispatch of them, your prudent forbearance of any 
reflections, that they might have needed less vigilance had you 
disposed of your fortune suitably ; in short, for all the arguments you 
every day give me of a generous and sincere afiection. 

" It is impossible for me to look back on many evils and pains 
which I have suffered since we came together, without a pleasure 
which is not to be expressed, from the proofs I have had, in those 
circumstances, of your unwearied goodness. How often has your 
tenderness removed pain from my sick head ! how often anguish from 
my afflicted heart ! With how skilful patience have I known you 
comply with the vain projects which pain has suggested^ to have an 
aching limh removed hy journeying from one side of a room to another ! 
how often, the next instant, travelled the same ground again, without 
TELLING your patient it was to no purpose to change his situation ! If 
there are such beings as guardian angels, thus are they employed. I 
will no more believe one of them more good in its inclinations, than I 
can conceive it more charming in its form, than my wife. 

" I will end this without so much as mentioning your little flock, 
or your own amiable figure at the head of it. That I think them 
preferable to all other children, I know is the efi'ect of passion and 
instinct ; that I believe you the best of wives, I know proceeds from 
experience and reason. 

** I am, Madam, your most obliged husband, and most obedient 
humble servant, 

" EicHARD Steele.'* 



" I sometimes compare my own life with that of Steele (yet 
oh ! how unlike !) led to this from having myself also for a 
brief time home arms, and written ' private ' after my name, 
or rather another name ; for being at a loss when suddenly- 
asked my name, I answered Cumherback, and verily my habits 
were so little equestrian, that my horse, I doubt not, was of 
that opinion. Of Steele, also, it might in one sense, at least, 
have been said, 

' Lingering he raised his latch at eve, 

Though tired in heart and limb ! 
^e loved no other place, and yet 
Mome was no home to him.^ 



102 

Oh ! the sorrow, the bitterness of that grief which springs 
from love not participated, or not returned in the spirit in 
which it is bestowed. Fearful and enduring is that canker- 
worm of the soul, that 

' Grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, 
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, 
Which finds no natural outlet, no rehef 
In word, or sigh, or tear.' 

" I sometimes think I shall ^-rite a book on the duties of 
women, more especially to their husbands. If such a book 
were well written^ I cannot doubt but that its results would be 
most salutaiy. I am inclined to think that both men and 
women err in their conduct and demeanour towards each other, 
quite as much from ignorance and unconsciousness of what is 
displeasing, as from selfishness or disregard. But to the 
execution of such a work, or rather such works (for ^A New 
Duty of Man ' is quite as much required, and this must be 
-vmtten by an affectionate and right-minded woman), the 
present sickly delicacy, the over-delicacy (and therefore essen- 
tial indelicacy) of the present taste would be opposed. To be 
of any use it should be a plain treatise, the results of experience, 
and should be given to all newly married couples by their 
parents, not in the form of admonition, but rather as containing 
much important information which they can no where else 
obtain." 



LETTEE XVIL 

My dear Frie^'d, May Uh, 1821. 

Mr. and Mrs. Gillman's kind love, and we beg that the 
good lady's late remembering that (as often the very fullness 
and vividness of the purpose and intention to do a thing im- 
poses on the mind a sort of counterfeit feeling of quiet, similar 
to the satisfaction which the having done it would produce) you 



LETTERS^ ETC. 103 

had not been T\Titten to, will not prejudice tlie present attempt 
at "better late than never.'' We have a party to-morrow, in 
which, because we believed it would interest you, you stood 
included. In addition to a neighbour, Eobert Sutton, and our- 
selves, and Mrs. Gillman's most un-Mrs. Gilhnanly sister (but 
n. h. this is a secret to all who are both blind and deaf), there 
will be the Mathews (Mr. and Mrs.) at home, Mathews I mean, 
and Charles and Mary Lamb. 

Of myself the best thing that I can say is that, in the belief 
of those well qualified to judge, I am not so ill as I fancy 
myself. Be this as it may, 

I am always, my dearest friend. 

With highest esteem and regard, 

Your affectionate friend, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

Of this day and the one following I have a few notes, which 
appear to me of interest. It must be borne constantly in mind, 
that much of what is preserved has relation to positions 
enforced by others, and which Coleridge held to be untenable 
on the particular grounds urged, not as being untrue in them- 
selves. 



" Had Lord Bp^on possessed perseverance enough to imdergo 
the drudgery of research, and had his theological studies and 
attainments been at all like mine, he would have been able to 
unsettle all the evidences of Christianity, upheld as it is at 
present by simple confutation. Is it possible to assent to the 
doctrine of redemption as at present promulgated, that the 
moral death of an unoffending being should be a consequence 
of the transgression of humanity* and its atonement? '' 

* Let it always be borne in mind, that this and other expressions 
in these pages were the opinions which he ever expressed to me^ and 
are not to be taken as evidences of doubt generally, but of disbelief in 
the corruptions of the vulgar Christianity in vogue. 



104 LETTERS, ETC. 

" Walter Scott's novels are chargeable with the same faults 
as Bertram^ et id omne genus, viz., that of ministering to the 
depraved appetite for excitement, and, though in a far less 
degree, creating sympathy for the vicious and infamous, solely 
because the fiend is daring, Not twenty lines of Scott's poetry 
will ever reach posterity ; it has relation to nothing.'* 



" When I wrote a letter upon the scarcity, it was generally 
said that it was the production of an immense cornfactor, and 
a letter was addressed to me under that persuasion, beginning 
^ Crafty Monopolist/ " 



" It is very singular that no true poet should have arisen 
from the lower classes, when it is considered that every peasant 
who can read knows more of books now than did ^schylus, 
Sophocles, or Homer ; yet if we except Burns, none* such have 
been." 



" Crashaw seems in his poems to have given the first ebul- 
lience of his imagination, unshapen into form, or much of, what 
we now term, sweetness. In the poem, Hope, by way of 
question and answer, his superiority to Cowley is self-evident. 
In that on the name of Jesus equally so; but his lines on 
St. Theresa are the finest. 

" Where he does combine richness of thought and diction 
nothing can excel, as in the lines you so much admire — 

* Since 'tis not to be had at home, 
She'l travel to a matyrdome. 
No home for her confesses she, 
But where she may a martyr be. 
She'l to the Moores, and trade with them 
For this invalued diadem, 

* In after years he excepted Elliot, the smith, though he held his 
judgment in very slight estimation. 



LETTERS, ETC. 105 

She offers them her dearest breath • 

With Christ's name in't, in change for death. 

She'l bargain with them, and will give 

Them God, and teach them how to live 

In Him, or if they this deny, 

For Him she'l teach them how to die. 

So shall she leave amongst them sown, 

The Lord's blood, or, at least, her own. 

Farewell then, all the world— adieu, 

Teresa is no more for you : 

Farewell all pleasures, sports and joys, 

Never till now esteemed toys — 

Farewell whatever dear'st may be, 

Mother's arms or father's knee ; 

Farewell house, and farewell home, 

She's for the Moores and martyrdom.' 



" These verses were ever present to my mind vAilst writing 
tlie second part of Christabel ; if, indeed, by some subtle pro- 
cess of the mind they did not suggest the first thought of the 
whole poem. — Poetry, as regards small poets, may be said to 
be, in a certain sense, conventional in its accidents and in its 
illustrations ; thus Crashaw uses an image : — 

* As sugar melts in tea away,' 

which, although proper then, and true now, was in bad taste at 
that time equally with the present. In Shakspeare, in Chaucer 
there was nothing of this. 

" The wonderful faculty which Shakspeare above all other 
men possessed, or rather the power which possessed him in the 
highest degree, of anticipating ever;^^hing, evidently is the 
result — at least partakes — of meditation, or that mental process 
which consists in the submitting to the operation of thought 
every object of feeling, or impulse, or passion observed out of 
it. I would be willing to live only as long as Shakspeare were 
the mirror to natm-e." 



106 LETTERS, ETC. 

^^ What can be finer in any poet than that beautiful passage 
in Milton— 

* Onward he moved 



And thousands of his saints around J' 

This is grandeur, but it is grandeur without completeness : but 
he adds — 

^ Far off their coming shone; ' 

which is the highest sublime. There is total completeness. 

" So I would say that the Saviour praying on the Mountain, 
the Desert on one hand, the Sea on the other, the city at an 
immense distance below, was sublime. But I should say of the 
Saviour looking towards the City, his countenance full of pity, 
that he was majestic, and of the situation that it was grand. 

" When the whole and the parts are seen at once, as mutually 
producing and explaining each other, as unity in multiety, 
there results shapeliness — -forma formosa. Where the per- 
fection of form is combined with pleasurableness in the sensa- 
tions, excited by the matters or substances so formed, there 
results the beautiful. 

''' Corollary, — Hence colour is eminently subservient to 
beauty, because it is susceptible of forms, i, e, outline, and yet 
is a sensation. But a rich mass of scarlet clouds, seen without 
any attention to the form of the mass or of the parts, may be 
a delightful but not a beautiful object or colour. 

" When there is a deficiency of unity in the line forming the 
whole (as angularity, for instance), and of number in the 
plurality or the parts, there arises the formal. 

" When the parts are numerous, and impressive, and pre- 
dominate, so as to prevent or greatly lessen the attention to the 
whole, there results the grand. 

" Where the impression of the whole, L e. the sense of unity 
predominates, so as to abstract the mind from the parts — the 
majestic. 

^' Where the parts by their harmony produce an effect of a 



107 

whole, but tliere is no seen form of a wliole producing or 
explaining the pai-ts, i.e, when the parts only are seen and 
distinguished, but the whole is felt — the picturesque. 

" Where neither whole nor parts, but unity, as boundless or 
endless allness — the sublime." 



" It often amuses me to hear men impute all their misfortunes 
to fate, luck, or destiny, whilst their successes or good fortune 
they ascribe to their own sagacity, cleverness, or penetration. 
It never occurs to such minds that light and darkness are one 
and the same, emanating from, and being part of, the same 
nature." 



'^ The w^ord Nature, from its extreme familiarity, and in some 
instances, fitness, as well as from the want of a term, or other 
name for God, has caused very much confusion in the thoughts 
and language of men. Hence a IsTature-God, or God-I^ature, 
not God in ^tTature ; just as others, with as little reason, have 
constructed a natural and sole religion.' ' 



^^ Is it then true, that reason to man is the ultimate faculty 
and that, to convince a reasonable man, it is sufficient to adduce 
adequate reasons or arguments ? How, if this be so, does it 
happen that we reject as insufficient the reasoning of a friend 
in our affliction for this or that cause or reason^ yet are comforted, 
soothed, and reassured, by similar or far less sufficient reasons^ 
when urged by a friendly and affectionate woman ? It is no 
answer to say that women were made comforters ; that it is 
the tone, and, in the instance of man's chief, best comforter, the 
wife of his youth, the mother of his children, the oneness with 
himself, which gives value to the consolation ; the reasons are the 
same, whether urged by man, woman, or child. It must be, there- 
fore, that there is something in the wiU itself, above and beyond, 
if not higher than, reason. Besides, is reason or the reasoning 



108 LETTERS, ETC. 

always the same, even when free from passion, fihn, or fever ? 
I speak of the same person. Does ne hold the doctrine of 
temperance in equal reverence when hungry as after he is 
sated ? Does he at forty retain the same reason^ only extended 
and developed, as he possessed at four and twenty ? Does he 
not love the meat in his youth which he cannot endure in his 
old age? But these are appetites, and therefore no part of him. 
Is not a man one to-day and another to-morrow ? Do not the 
very ablest and wisest of men attach greater weight at one 
moment to an argument or a reason than they do at another ? 
Is this a want of sound and stable judgment? If so, what 
then is this perfect reason ? for we have shown what it is not.'' 



"• It is prettily feigned, that when Plutus is sent from 
Jupiter, he limps and gets on very slowly at first ; but when 
he comes from Pluto, he runs and is swift of foot. This, 
rightly taken, is a great sweetener of slow gains. Bacon 
(alas ! the day) seems to have had this in mind w^hen he 
says, ' seek not proud gains, but such as thou mayst get justly, 
use soberly, distribute, cheerfully, and leave contentedly.' He 
that is covetous makes too much haste ; and the wise man 
saith of him, ' he cannot be innocent.' " 



^' I have often been pained by observing in others, and was 
fully conscious in myself, of a sympathy with those of rank 
and condition in preference to their inferiors, and never dis- 
covered the source of this sympathy until one day at Keswick 
I heard a thatcher's wife crying her heart out for the death of 
her little child. It was given me all at once to feel, that I 
sympathised equally with the poor and the rich in all that 
related to the best part of humanity — the affections ; but that, 
in what relates to fortune, to mental misery, struggles, and 
conflicts, we reserve consolation and sympathy for those who 
can appreciate its force and value.'' 



LETTERS, ETC. 109 

" There are many men, especially at tlie outset of life, wlio, 
in their too eager desire for the end, overlook the difficulties 
in the way -^ there is another class, who see nothing else. The 
first class ma?/ sometimes fail ; the latter rarely succeed." 



Having been for nearly sixteen years a constant guest, and, 
for part of that time, the housemate of Charles Lamb — the 
gentle, the pensive Elia — and his admirable, his every way 
delightful sister — it becomes a duty, sacred though painful, to 
place on record all that I can convey in a brief space of the 
dearest, best loved, and earliest associate of Coleridge. — Is it 
too much to hope that the friend whom he so loved and 
cherished when young, of whose splendid talents and their fit 
application he always augured so highly, may yet be induced 
to furnish what recollections he retains of those days when 
Lamb was in the height and vigour of his genius, relished, 
and appreciated by troops of friends, by whom he was loved 
even more than he was admired ? What names, and what 
recollections are there not in those names ! Mrs. Inchbald, 
Mrs. Barbauld (the two Bald women, as he used to call them), 
Lloyd, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Irving, Colonel Phillips, Admiral 
Burney, William Godwin, Monkhouse — all dead: Wordsworth, 
Southey, Sergeant Talfourd, Basil Montagu, Martin Burney, 
Mr. Carey, Barry Cornwall, Eobert Jameson, Leigh Hunt, 
Manning, Crabb, Kobinson, Charles Cowden Clark, Hood, 
N'ovello, Liston, Miss Kelly, Mr. Moxon, WiUiam Godwin, 
Mrs. Shelley, Ned PhiUips, &c. &c. &c. 

I am quite aware that I can convey no notion of what 
Charles Lamb was, hardly even of what he said, as far the 
greatest part of its value depended upon the manner in which 
it was said. Even the best of his jokes — and how good they 
were you can never know — depended upon the circumstances, 
which to narrate would be to overlay and weary the attention. 

The foE-omng lines of Lloyd will convey some idea, though 
very imperfect, of this model-man : — 



no 

LAMB. 

*' The cliilcl of impulse ever to appear, 
And yet througli duty's path strictly to steer ! 

^' Oh Lamb, thou art a mystery to me ! 
Thou art so prudent and so mad with wildness, 
Thou art a source of everlasting glee I 
Yet desolation of the very childless 
Has been thy lot! Never in one like thee 
Did I see worth majestic from its wildness ; 
So far in thee from being an annoyance, 
E'en to the vicious 'tis a source of joyance." 

The first night I ever spent with Lamb was after a day 
with Coleridge, when we returned by the same stage ; and 
from something I had said or done of an unusual kind, I was 
asked to pass the night with him and his sister. Thus com- 
menced an intimacy which never knew an hour^s interruption 
to the day of his deatH. 

He asked me what I thought of Coleridge. I spoke as I 
thought. *' You should have seen him twenty years ago," 
said he, with one of his sweet smiles, '' when he was with 
me at the Cat and Salutation in Newgate Market. Those 
were days (or nights), but they were marked with a white 
stone. Such were his extraordinary powers, that when it was 
time for him to go and be married, the landlord entreated his 
stay, and offered him free quarters if he would only talk." 



'^ I once wrote to Wordsworth to inquire if he was really a 
Christian. He replied, ' When I am a good man, then I am a 
Christian.' '' 



*' I advised Coleridge to alter the lines In Christ abel — 

*' Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, 
Had a toothless mastiff bitch/' 
into — 

'^ Sir Leoline, the Baron round, 
Had a toothless mastiff hound ; '^ 



LETTERS, ETC. Ill 

but Coleridge, who has no alacrity in altering, changed this 
first termination to which, but still left in the other, bitch." 



" Irving once came back to ask me if I could ever get in a 
word with Coleridge. ' No ! ' said I, ^ I never want.' 

" ' Why, perhaps it is better not,' said the parson, and went 
away, determined how to behave in future.'' 



" I made that joke first (the Scotch corner in hellj^re with- 
out hrimstmie)^ though Coleridge somewhat licked it into 
shape." 



" Wordsworth, the greatest poet of these times. Still he is 
not, nor yet is any man, an Ancient Mariner." 



'^ Proctor is Jealous of his own fame, which he cannot now 
claim. 



" Somerset House, Whitehall Chapel (the old Banqueting 
Hall), the church at Limehouse and the new chm^ch at Chelsea, 
with the Bell house at Chelsea College, which always reminded 
him of Trinity College, Cambridge, were the objects most 
interesting to him in London. He did not altogether agree 
with Wordsworth, who thought the view from Harewood- 
place one of the finest in old London ; admired more the houses 
at the Bond-street corner of George* street, which Manning 
said were built of bricks resembling in colour the great wall of 
China." 



Martin Burney, whilst earnestly explaining the three kinds 
of acid, was stopped by Lamb's saying, — " The best of all 
kinds of acid, however, as you know, Martin, is uity— assid- 
uity.'' 



112 

Lamb then told us a story of that very dirty person, Tom 
Bish, which I give here for its felicity. 

Some one, I think it was Martin, asserted Bish was a name 
which would not afford a pun. Lamb at once said, I went this 
morning to see him, and upon coming out of his room, I was 
asked by a jobber if he was alive ? ^' Yes,'' said I, " he is 
B--B— Bish-yet." 



Martin defined poetry as the highest truth, which Lamb 
denied, and, amongst other instances, quoted the song of 
Deborah. 



The conversation turned one night on the evidence against 
the Queen, especially Majocchi. Lamb said he should like to 
see them ; he would ask them to supper. Mr. Talfom^d 
observed, — 

" You would not sit with them ?" 

" Yes,'^ said Lamb, '^ I would sit with anything but a hen 
or a tailor.' ' 



A few days before, he had been with Jameson to the Tower, 
and, in passing by Billingsgate, was witness to a quaiTel and 
fight between two fish-women, one of whom, taking up a knife, 
cut ofP her antagonist's thumb. Ha!" said Lamb, looking 
about him as if he only just recognised the place, " this is 
Fair-lop-Fair." 



One evening, when Liston was present, and, if I recollect 
aright, Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt, the conversation turned chiefly 
on theatres and actors. I have preserved the follomng 
recollections : — 

Hansard, the printer to the House of Commons, aping the 
patron, invited Porson to dinner in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. 
Everything passed off very well until about eleven o'clock, 



LETTERS, ETC. 113 

wlien the rest of the company departed. Porson alone re- 
mamed, and proposed to Hansard to furnish two more bottles 
of Avine. One was brought and despatched, when Hansard, 
having the fear of drunkenness before his eyes, thinking it a 
sure plan, said his wine was now out, but if Mr. Porson would 
honour him with his company to-morrow, he should have as 
much as he liked. This did not suit the Professor, who in- 
quired if there was no brandy ? — No ! Xo rum ? No 
Hollands? — No! Nothing but small beer. ^^ Well, then, ''cried 
the Professor, ^' we will have a bottle of lightning." 

*' Indeed, Professor, we have no gin, and it is really too 
late to get it : it is past one o'clock.'^ 

*^Past one! only one o'clock! Why then I say small 
beer." 

Small beer was brought, and Porson sat till six o'clock 
drinking small beer out of a wine-glass, taking care to fill 
Hansard's glass each time, and singing — 

^' When wine and gin are gone and spent, 
Then is small beer most excellent.'' 



Listen told us that in crossing Bow-street he saw an old 
man before him, whom he took for M. Mercier. He tapped 
him on the shoulder with — 

'' Good morning ; how are you?" 

^* What's that to you, you great goose?" said a gruff strange 
voice. 

" I beg your pardon ; indeed I took you for a Frenchman." 

"Did you, by God? Then take that for your mis-taJce,^^ 
And he knocked the poor droll into the kennel. 



George Frederick Cooke was once invited by a builder or 
architect of one of the theatres, Elmerton, as I think. He 
went, and Elmerton being at a loss whom to invite, pitched 
upon Brandon, the boxkeeper, to meet him. All went on pretty 

8 



114 

well until midnight, when George Frederick, getting very 
drunk, his host began to be tired of his company. George 
took the hint, and his host lighted him do^Ti stairs into the 
hall, when Cooke, laying hold of both his ears, shouted — 
"Have I, George Frederick Cooke, degraded myself by 
dining with bricklayers to meet boxkeepers?^^ — tripped up his 
heels and left him sprawling in darkness. 



I retain a very vivid recollection of Manning, though so 
imperfect in my memory of persons that I should not recollect 
him at this time. I think few persons had so great a share of 
Lamb's admiration, for to few did he vouchsafe manifestations 
of his very extraordinary powers. Once, and once only, did I 
witness an outburst of his unemiodied spirit, when such was 
the effect of his more than magnetic, his magic power (learnt 
was it in Chaldea, or in that sealed continent to which the 
superhuman knowledge of Zoroaster was conveyed by Confucius, 
into which he was the first to penetrate with impunity), that 
we were all rapt and carried aloft into the seventh heaven. He 
seemed to see and to convey to us clearly (I had almost said 
adequately), what was passing in the presence of the Great 
Disembodied One, rather by an intuition or the creation of a 
new sense than by words. Verily there are viore things on 
earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. I am unwilling 
to admit the influence this wonderful man had over his auditors, 
as I cannot at all convey an adequate notion or even image of 
his extraordinary and very peculiar powers. Passing from a 
state which was only not of the highest excitement, because 
the power was/eZf, not shown, he, by an easy, a graceful, and, 
as it seemed at the time, a natural transition, entered upon the 
discussion, or, as it rather seemed, the solution of some of the 
most interesting questions connected with the early pursuits of 
men. Amongst other matters, the origin of cooking, which it 
seems was deemed of sufficient importance by older, and 



LETTEES ETC. 115 

therefore ^^-iser, nations to form part of their archives. How 
this transcript was obtained, whether from that intuitive know- 
ledge to which allusion has been made, or whether application 
was had to the keeper of the state paper office of the Celestial 
Empire, I cannot now say. I can only vouch for the truth of 
what follows, which, T\ith the reply to a letter of acknow- 
ledgment from Coleridge, who, having received a roast pig, and 
not knowing whence it came, fixed upon Lamb as the donor, 
were afterwards fused into an essay, perhaps the most 
delightful in our language. 

" A chikl, in tlie early ages, was left alone by its mother in a house 
in which was a pig. A fire took place ; the child escaped, the pig 
was burned. The child scratched and pattered amongst the ashes for 
its pig, which at last it found. All the provisions being burnt, the 
child was very hungry, and not yet having any artificial aids, such as 
golden ewers and damask napkins, began to lick or suck its fingers to 
free them from the ashes. A piece of fat adhered to one of his 
thumbs, which, being very savoury alike in taste and odour, he 
rightly judged to belong to the pig. Liking it much, he took it to his 
mother, just then appearing, who also tasted it, and both agreed that 
it was better than fruit or vegetables. 

" They rebuilt the house, and the woman, after the fashion of good 
wives, who, says the chronicle, are now very scarce, put a pig into it, 
and was about to set it an fire, when an old man, ane whom obser- 
vation and reflection had made a philosopher, suggested that a pile of 
wood would do as well. (This must have been the father of econo- 
mists.) The next pig was killed before it was roasted, and thus 

" From low beginnings,. 
We date our vrinnings." 



Met T. at Lamb's. He seemed to tend towards the negative 
sensualism. Mentioned Coleridge as one possessed of trans- 
cendental benevolence and most exquisite eloquence, as one to 
whom nations might Ksten and be praud. He spoke of him- 
self as seared and hopeless, and of Austin, who had, by the 
force, the clearness, and the originality of his views and argu- 
ments, won him over to the creed of the veritable sceptics, the 



116 

sneerers, as ^' the cold-blooded ruffian/' Spoke of Maeauley, 
of Moultrie, of Praed. Of Macauley as the most eloquent, of 
Moultrie as the most pure and highminded, and of Praed as 
the most insincere. 

Spent a very delightful day at Highgate with Lamb and 
one or two other congenial spirits. Anster, I think, was one. 
Had a long stroll over Hampstead Heath ; Lamb, with his fine 
face, taking all the reflective, and the vast volume of the other 
all the yoimger and older of the passers-by. It seemed to 
me — then in my youth and spring of hope and joyance — to 
realise the olden time ; the deep attention with which we all 
listened, each striving to get nearest to our great teacher, 
fearing to lose a word, attracted all eyes ; many followed us, 
and still more looked earnestly, as wishing to partake of the 
intellectual banquet thus open as it were to all comers. 

Never will that particular evening be effaced from my recol- 
lection. The talk was on duelling, on Kenilworth, and on 
Peveril of the Peak (which I knew assuredly to have been 
written by Scott, having myself furnished the first suggestion 
in a rambling and somewhat excited letter, written amidst the 
ruins of Castleton, the stronghold of the Peverils), of Sir 
Thomas Brown, and of old Mandeville. We read old poetry 
and new ; but it was worthy to have been old. — Lamb observed 
when we got home, — " He sets his mark upon whatever he 
reads ; it is henceforth sacred. His spirit seems to have 
breathed upon it ; and, if not for its author, yet for his sake we 
admire it." Coleridge accused Lamb of having caused the 
Sonnet to Lord Stanhope to be re-inserted in the joint volume 
published at Bristol. He declared it was written in ridicule 
of the exaggerated praises then bestowed upon the French 
revolution. 

'' Not, Stanhope ! witli the patriot's doubtful name 
I mock thy worth — friend of the human race ! 
Since scorning faction's low and partial aim, 
Aloof thou wendest in thy stately pace, 



LETTERS, ETC. 117 

Thyself redeeming from that leprous stain, 

Nobility ; and aye unterrified, 

Pourest thy Abdiel warnings on the train, 

That sit complotting with rebellious pride 

'Gainst* her, who from the Almighty's bosom leapt 

With whirlwind arm, fierce minister of love ! 

Wherefore, ere virtue o'er thy tomb hath wept, 

Angels shall lead thee to the throne above, 

And thou from forth its clouds shalt hear the voice, 

Champion of freedom and her God ! rejoice 1 '' 

Sunday. — Dined with Lamb alone. A most delightful 
day of reminiscences. Spoke of Mrs. Inchbald as the only 
endurable clever woman be bad ever known ; called them 
impudent, forward, unfeminine, and unhealthy in their minds. 
Instanced, amongst many others, Mrs. Barbauld, who was a 
torment and curse to her husband. "Yet/' said Lamb, 
" Letitia was only just tinted ; she was not what the she-dogs 
now call an intellectual woman. '^ Spoke of Southey most 
handsomely ; indeed he never would allow any one but 
himself to speak disparagingly of either Coleridge, Words - 
w^ortb, or Southey, and with a sort of misgiving of Hazlitt as 
a wild, mad being. Attributed his secession, to pique that he 
had not been asked to meet Wordsworth. He had also 
accused Lamb of not seeing him when with Wordsworth in 
Holborn. Lamb was much pleased with Wordsworth's 
attentions, saying, '^ He gave me more than half the time he 
was in London, when he is supposed to be with the Lowthers; '^ 
and after supper spoke with gTeat feeling of Coleridge, and 
with a grateful sense of what he had been to him, adding 
after a recapitulation of the friends he admired or loved, " But 
Coleridge is a glorious person,' ' and, with a smile of that 
peculiar sweetness so entirely his own, " He teaches w^hat is 
best.'^ 



'^ Gallic liberty. 



118 

" Miss Lamb, in her very pleasant manner, said, ^ Charles, 
who is Mr. Pitman ? ^ 

^' ' Why, he is a clerk in our office/ 

" ' But why do you not ask Mr. White and Mr. Field ? I 
do not like to give up old friends for new ones.' 

" ' Pitman has been very civil to me, always asking me to 
go and see him ; and when the smoking club at Don Saltero's 
was broken up, he offered me all the ornaments and apparatus, 
which I declined, and therefore I asked him here this night. 
I could never bear to give pain; have I not been called 
th'-th'-th'-the gentle-hearted Charles when I v^as young, and 
shall I now derogate ? ' '^ 



" Lamb one night wanted to demonstrate, after the manner 
of Swift, that the Man-t-chou Tartars were cannibals, and that 
the Chinese were identical with the Celtes (Sell Teas).'' 



*' He said that he could never impress a Scotchman with any 
new truth ; that they all required it to be spelled and explained 
away in old equivalent and familiar words or images. Had 
spoken to a Scotchman, who sat next to him at a dinner the 
day before, of a healthy book. 

'' ' Healthy, sir, healthy did you say ?' 

'' ^Yes.' 

^•' ^ I dinna comprehend. I have heard of a healthy man 
and of a healthy morning, but never of a healthy book." 



^' Told a story of John Ballantyne, who going in a chair, the 
two caddies jostled him a good deal, upon which John remon- 
strated. The two caddies set him down, and told him that he 
being very little and light, was very wrong to choose that mode 
of conveyance, and argued the matter with him at great length, 
he being in the chair and unable to release himself." 



" One night, when Mathews was going to the theatre at 



LETTERS, ETC. 119 

Edinburgli, and was almost too late, lie took a coach and 
ordered the coachman to dnve to the theatre. In going up 
the hill, the horses being tired, the coach made no progress, 
upon which Mathews remonstrated, saying that he should he 
too late — he should lose his time. The coachman very coolly 
said, ^Your honour should reflact that I am losing time as 
weel's yersel."' 



^^ On another occasion, when Mathews was returning very 
late, or, by'r lady, it might be early in the morning, to Edin- 
burgh, his friend, who was somewhat fou, refused to pay the 
toll, stating that he had paid it before that day. The little 
girl locked the toU, and he loaded her with abuse, to which she 
made little reply. After much altercation her mother opened 
a casement above, and in a sleepy, feeble tone, inquired what 
the gentleman said. ^' iSTa, mither,'' said the child, " it's no 
the gentleman, it's the wine speaking.^' 



" The best pun ever made is that of Swift, who called after 
a man carrying a hare over bis shoulders, " Is that your own 
hare or a wig ?'' 



Met Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, with Mr. Talfourd, Monk- 
house, and Eobinson. A very delightful evening. Wordsvrorth 
almost as good a reader as Coleridge ; to a stranger I 
think he would seem to carry even more authority both in 
what he read and said. He spoke of Southey and Coleridge 
with measured respect, and, as I thought, just appreciation. 
Pointed out some passages in the Curse of Kehama which he 
admired, and repeated some portions of the Ancient Mariner ; 
also from the Eiver Duddon and the Excursion. Eepeated 
the Highland Girl. He seemed to me to present the idea of 
a poet in whom the repressive faculty was predominant. Taken 
altogether, he impressed me very favourably, and I regret 



120 LETTEES, ETC. 

deeply that I did not avail myself of subsequent opportunities, 
not seldom proffered by Lamb and Coleridge, of meeting him 
more frequently. But I then laboured under the impression 
that he had not acted kindly to that dear and loved being, 
whom I loved living, and honour dead. Even now, when 
myself almost indifferent to new associations, I regret this 
enforced denial of what at that period would have enhanced 
the value of existence, — communion with that glorious and 
effulgent mind ; but I do not regret the impulses which led to 
this self-denial. 



Met Mrs Shelley and Mrs. "Williams at Lamb's cottage, in 
Colebrook Eow. Was much interested by these two young 
and lovely women. Interesting in every view. Knew Mrs. 
Shelley from her likeness to a picture by Titian in the Loma'Cy 
which is a far greater resemblance to Mrs. Shelley in the 
beautiful and very peculiar expression of her countenance than 
would be any portrait taken now. Hers seemed a face, as 
Hazlitt remarked when he pointed it out to me, that should 
be kept to acquire likeness. Mrs. Shelley at first sight ap- 
peared deficient in feeling ; but this cannot be real. She spoke 
of Shelley without apparent emotion, without regard or a 
feeling approaching to regret, without pain as without interest, 
and seemed to contemplate him, as everything else, through 
the same passionless medium. 

Mrs. Shelley expressed much admiration of the personal 
manner and conversation of Lord Byron, but at the same time 
admitted that the accoimt in the London Magazine for Sep- 
tember was faithful. She censured his conduct towards Leigh 
Hunt as paltry and unfeeling ; spoke very slightly of his 
studies or reading ; thought him very superficial in his 
opinions ; owed everything to his memory, which was almost 
preternatural. Said that he felt a supreme contempt for all 
his contemporaries, with the exception of Wordsworth and 
Coleridge, and he ridiculed and derided even them, and was 



121 

altogetlier proud, selfish, and frequently puenle. Mrs. Williams, 
I think, gave the account of his determining to have a plimi 
pudding on his birth-day, and after giving minute directions 
so as to prevent the chance of mishap, it was, to the eternal 
dishonour of the Italian cucina, brought up in a tureen of the 
substance of soup. Upon this failure in the production he was 
frequently quizzed, and betrayed all the petulance of a child, 
and more than a child's cuiiosity to learn who had reported the 
circumstance. 



" Wordsworth one day said to me, when I had been speaking 
of Coleridge, praising him in my way, ' Yes, the Coleridges 
are a clever family.' I replied, ' I know* one that is.' '' 



LETTER XYIIL 

My deaeest Fkiexd, June 23, 1821. 

Be assm-ed that nothing bearing a nearer resemblance to 

offence, whether felt or perceived, than a syllogism bears to the 

* My amiable and kind-hearted friend said here less than the truth* 
at least as I understand it. Cleverness was not at all a characteristic 
of Coleridge, whilst it happily suits those to whom Wordsworth alluded, 
who are or have been clever enough to appropriate their uncle's 
great reputation to their own advancement, and then to allow him to 
need assistance from strangers. Ko one who knows the character or 
calibre of mind, whether of the Bishop or the Judge, can doubt, cceteris 
paribus^ that the one would still have been a curate and the other a 
barrister, with but httle practice, had they borne the name of Smith 
— had they wanted the passport of his name. It is not always wise 
to scan too deeply the source of human actions, but I am irresistibly 
led to the conclusion, that a sort of half-consciousness of " that same " 
entered into this almost (in one sense more than) parricidal neglect. 
I blame them not. I but narrate this as a curious and painful instance 
how fearfully we are made ; how often we prefer our self-will (so 
termed), nay, even the most sordid injustice, to our duties. 



122 

colour of the man in the moon's whiskers, ever crossed my 
brain : not even with that brisk diagonal traverse which Grhosts 
and apparitions always choose to surprise us in. I have indeed 
observed or fancied, that, for some time past, you have been 
anxious about something, have had something pressing upon your 
mind, which I wished out of you, though not particularly to have 
it out of you. I must explain myself. Say that X. were my 
dearest Friend, to whom I would be as it were transparent, and 
have him so to me in all respects that concerned our perma- 
nent Being, and likewise in all circumstantial accidents in which 
we could be of service to each other. Yet there are many 
things that will press upon us which are our individualities ^ 
which one man does not feel any tendency in himself to speak 
of to a man, however dear or valued. X. does not think or 
wish to think of it when with Y., nor Y. in his turn when with 
X., and yet still the great law holds good — whatever vexes or 
depresses ought if possible to be out of us. Now I say that I 
should rejoice if you had a female Friend — a Sister, an Aunt, 
or a Beloved to whom you could lay yourself open. I should 
further exult if your confidante were my Friend too, my Sister 
or my Wife. 

God bless you. 
T. AUsop, Esq. S» T. Coleridge. 

This letter relates to a domestic, not to say family perplexity, 
peculiarly and sacredly my own ; one to which no counsel could 
apply, no consolation mitigate or assuage. Under the circum- 
stances in which I was at that time placed, I could not, I felt it 
would be premature, to avail myself of the invitation contained 
in the above letter : and this will, to a great extent, explain 
much that is contained in the following letters. I had a still 
farther reason. The individual to whom allusion is made 
above, was at that time the ne plus ultra of my friend's love 
and fraternal admiration ; yet with qualities of head and heart 
worthy of all acceptance, was partly (almost I had nearly said) 



ETC. 123 

on that veiy account disqualified in my innermost convictions, 
certainl}^ according to ih^ judgment oi my then feelhigs^ for the 
office indicated. 



LETTEE XIX. 

My dear Friend, 

We are quite sure that you would not allow yom^self to 
fancy any rightful ground, cause, or occasion for not coming 
here, but the wish, the duty, or the propriety of going else- 
where or staying at home. y>^hen the N^eedle of yom- Thoughts 
begins to be magnetic, you may be certain that my Pole is at 
that moment attracting you by the spiritual magic of strong 
mshing for your arrival. N.B. My Pole includes in this 
instance both the Poles of Mr. and eke of Mrs. Gilhnan, i.e,, 
the head and the heart. 

But seriously — I am a little anxious — so give my blest 
sisterly Friend a few lines by return of post — just to let us 
know that you are and have been well, and that nothing of a 
painful nature has deprived us of the expected pleasure ; a 
pleasure which, believe me, stands a good many degrees above 
moderate in the cordi or hedonometer of. 

Yours most cordmYljy 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



It must always be borne in mind, that the fragments, letters, 
and conversations which are here perused at one time, were 
written or spoken at different times, and under the influence of 
varied feelings and convictions, and the apparent discrepancies, 
or even contradictions, are such as you must be conscious of 
yourselves as reflective, and therefore progTessive, beings. 



" In the sense in which I then spoke and thought, I would 
again repeat the note to the word priest, originally prefixed 



124 LETTERS, ETC. 

to my Juvenile Poems, though perhaps I should somewhat 
extend it. 

'' I deem that the teaching the Gospel for hire is wrong, 
because it gives the teacher an improper bias in favour of par- 
ticular opinions, on a subject where it is of the last importance 
that the mind should be perfectly unbiassed. Such is my 
private opinion : — but I mean not to censure all hired teachers, 
many among w^hom I know, and venerate as the best and 
wisest of men. God forbid that I should think of these when 
I use the word priest ; a name after which any other term of 
abhorrence would appear an anti-climax. By a priest I mean 
a man, who, holding the scourge of power in his right hand, 
and a Bible translated bi/ authority in his left, doth necessarily 
cause the Bible and the scourge to be associated ideas, and so 
produces that temper of mind that leads to infidelity ; infidelity 
which, judging of Eevelation by the doctrines and practices of 
Established Churches, honours God hy rejecting Christ J' 



" I have been reading Judge Barrington^s Sketches. It is 
the most pleasant book about Ireland I ever read. I was 
especially amused by the following : — 

dialogue between TOM FLINTER AND HIS MAN. 
'' Tom Flinter, Dick ! said he ; 
''Dick. What? said he. 

" Tom Flinter. Fetch me my hat, says he, 

For I will go, says he, 

To Timahoe, says he ; 

To the fair, says he ; 

And buy all that's there, says he, 
*' Dick Pay what you owe^ says he; 

And then you may go, says he, 

To Timahoe, says he; 

To the fair, says he; 

And buy all that's there, says he; 
" Tom Flinter, Well, by this and hy that, said he, 

Dick ! hang up my hat ! says he." 



LETTERS, ETC. 125 

** Whenever pliilosopliy has taken into its plan religion, it 
has ended in scepticism ; and whenever religion excludes phi- 
losophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to Trilfiil blind- 
ness and superstition. Scotus, the first of the schoohiien, held 
that religion might be above, but could not be adverse to, true 
philosophy.'' 



*' To say that life is the result of organisation, is to say that 
the builders of a house are its results.'' 



"The 'Friend' is a secret which I have entrusted to the 
public; and, imlike most secrets, it hath been well kept." 



" Interestingness, the best test and characteristic of love- 
liness." 



"Humom* is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not." 



" All that is good is in the reason, not in the miderstanding ; 
which is proved by the malignity of those who lose their reason. 
When a man is said to be out of his wits, we do not mean that 
he has lost his reason, but only his understanding, or the power 
of choosing his means or perceiving their fitness to the end. 
Don Quixote (and in a less degree, the Pilgrim's Progress) is 
an excellent example of a man who had lost his ^its or under- 
standing, but not his reason." 



LETTER XX. 

My DEAR Friend, Sept 15th, 1821. 

I cannot rest until I have answered your last letter. I 
have contemplated your character, affectionately indeed, but 
through a clear medium. No film of passion, no glittering 
mist of outward advantages, has arisen between the sight and 



126 LETTERS, ETC. 

the object : I had no other prepossession than the esteem which 
my knowledg'e of your sentiments and conduct could not but 
secure for you. I soon learnt to esteem you ; and in esteeming, 
became attached to you. I began by loving the man on account 
of his conduct, but I ended in valuing the actions chiefly as so 
many looks and attitudes of the same person. " ^as^ thou any 
thing ? Share it with me, and I will pay thee an equivalent. 
Art thou any thing? then we will exchange souls.'' 

We can none of us, not the wisest of us, brood over any 
source of affliction inwardly, keeping it back, and as it were 
pressing it in on ourselves ; but we must magnify it. We cannot 
see it clearly, much less distinctly ; and as the object enlarges 
beyond its real proportions, so it becomes vivid ; and the feelings 
that blend with it assume a proportionate undue intensity. So 
the one acts on the other, and what at first was effect, in its 
turn becomes a cause ; and when at length we have taken heart, 
and given the whole thing, with all its several parts, the proper 
distance from our mind's eye, by confiding it to a true friend, 
we are ourselves surprised to find what a dwarf the giant 
shrinks into, as soon as it steps out of the mist into clear 
sunlight. 

I am aware that these are truths of which you do not need to 
be informed ; but they will not be the less impressive on this 
account in your judgment, knowing, as you must know, that 
nothing short of my deep and anxious convictions of their im- 
portance in all cases of hidden distress, and of their unspeakable 
importance in yours, could impel me to seek and entreat your 
entire confidence, to beg you, so fervently as I here am doing, 
to open out to me the cause of your anxiety, that I may offer 
you the best advice in my power, — advice that will not be the 
less dispassionate from its being dictated by zealous friendship, 
and blended with the truest love. 

I fear that in any decision to which you may come in any 
matter affecting yourself alone, you may, from a culpable delicacy 
of honour, which, forbidden by wisdom and the universal expe- 



LETTERS, ETC. 127 

rience of others, cannot but be in contradiction to the genuine 
dictates of duty, want fortitude to choose the lesser evil, at 
whatever cost to your immediate feelings, and to put that choice 
into immediate and peremptoiy act. But I must finish. I 
trust that the warmth and earnestness of my language are not 
warranted by the occasion ; but they are barely proportionate 
to the present solicitude of, 

Your faithful and affectionate friend, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



" The German ^Titers have acquired a style and an elegance 
of thought and of mind, just as we have attained a style and 
smartness of composition (thus in my notes), so that if you 
were to read an ordinary German author as an English one, 
you would say, — ^ This man has something in him, this man 
thinks ; ' whereas it is merely a method acquired by them, as 
we have acquired a style." 



" Dr. Yomig one day was speaking of John Hunter as being 
greatly over-rated, upon which I replied, — ^Yes, to minds 
which, like birds entangled in the lime, scoff and sneer at those 
pinions of power that have emancipated themselves from the 
thrall which bound them, but are nevertheless impeded in 
their upward progress by the shackles they have broken, but 
from the slime of which they are not freed.' 

" The Doctor noticed my assimilating weight and gravity, 
civilly informing me that those who understood these matters 
considered them as different as fire and heat. 

" I said, ^ Yes, in that philosophy which, together with a 
great quantity of old clothes, I discarded thirty years ago, and 
which, by identifying cause and effect, destroys both.' '^ 



A copy of the Lyrical Ballads was sent to Mr. Fox, who 



128 LETTERS, ETC. 

dissented from the conclusions of Mr. Wordsworth as to Ruth 
and the Brothers, but expressed his admiration of " We are 
Seven/' and " The Linnet/' and conveyed his regret that he 
knew not to whom he was to refer the most beautiful poem 
in the language, " Love/' adding,—" I learn we are indebted 
to Mr. Coleridge for that exquisite poem, ^^ The Nightingale." 

It is right that I should here observe, that the conversations, 
of which this is a very small part^ possessed little that could 
be abstracted, and that, in preserving these personal traits, I 
was gratifying myself by retaining more vivid and distinct 
knowlege of the most prominent of my contemporaries. This 
will apply equally to many other recollections and memo- 
randums, both before and after. 

'^ Longmans offered me the copyright of the Lyrical Ballads, 
at the same time saying that, if I would wTite a few more, 
they would publish my contributions. When I expressed a 
hope that 3,000 might be circulated, Wordsworth spurned at 
the idea, and said that twenty times that number must be sold. 
I was told by Longmans that the greater part of the Lyrical 
Ballads had been sold to seafaring men, who ha\dng heard of 
the Ancient Mariner, concluded that it was a naval song- 
book, or, at all events, that it had some relation to nautical 
matters.""* 



* It is somewhat singular that the name of another and larger book 
of Mr. Wordsworth's should also owe its circulation to a misconcep- 
tion of the title. It has been my fortune to have met with the 
Excursion at a great number of inns and boarding-houses in pictu- 
resque scenes — in places where parties go for excursions ; and upon 
inquiring how it happened that so expensive* a book was purchased 
when an old Universal Magazine, an Athenian Oracle, or, at best, one 
of the Bridgewater Treatises, would do as well to send the guest to 
sleep, I was given to understand in three several places that they 
were left by parties who had finished their material excursion, but, 
alas ! for their taste, had left their poetic excursion untouched ; uncut, 
even, beyond the story of Margaret. 



129 

Spoke ^dth interest of Irving. Eegretted that lie should 
have expressed his inability to preserve his original simplicity 
when addressing an audience of the highest classes. Thought 
this the feeling of a third or fourth-rate mind ; that he might 
have been perplexed would not have derogated from his cha- 
racter, but to allow an audience to influence him further than 
the fitness of his discourse to his hearers v/as not to his ad- 
vantage. 



" The most happy marriage I can picture or image to myself 
would be the union of a deaf man to a blind* woman." 



LETTEE XXL 

My deaeest Friend, Sept 2Ath, 1821. 

I will begin with the beginning of yom* (to me most af- 
fecting) letter. Not exactly ohligation, my entirely beloved 
and rehed-on friend ! The soiling hand of the world has 
dyed and sunk into the sense and import of the term too in- 
separably, for it to convey the kind and degree of what I feel 
towards you, on the one scale. I love you so truly, that in 
the first glance, as it were, and welcome of your anxious affec- 
tion, it delights me for the very act^s sake, I think only of it 
and you, or rather both are one and the same, and I live in 
you. Nor does the complacency suffer any abatement, but 
becomes more intense and lively. As a mother would talk of 
the soothing attentions, the sacrifices and devotion of a son, 
eager to supply every want and anticipate every wish, so I 
talk to myself concerning you ; and I am proud of you, and 
proud to be the object of what cannot but appear lovely to my 
judgment, and which the hard contrast in so many heart- 

* Whilst these pages are passing through the press, this most ex- 
traordinary conjunction lias taken place at BarmingjUear Maidstone. 

9 



130 LETTERS, ETC. 

withering instances forced on me by the experience of my last 
twenty years, compels me to feel and value with an additional 
glow. Lastly, it is a source of strength and comfort to know, 
that the labours and aspirations and sympathies of the genuine 
and invisible Humanity exist in a social world of their own ; 
that its attractions and assimilations are no Platonic fable, no 
dancing flames or luminous bubbles on the magic cauldron 
of my wishes ; but that there are, even in this unkind life, 
spiritual parentages and filiations of the soul. Can there be a 
counterpoise to these ? Not a counterpoise — but as weights 
in the counter- scale there will come the self-reproach, that 
spite of all inauspicious obstacles, not in my power to remove 
mthout loss of self-respect, 1 have not done all I could and 
might have done to prevent my present state of dependence. 
I am now able to hope that I shall be capable of setting apart 
such a portion of my useable time to my greater work (in 
assertion of the ideal truths and ci priori probability, and a 
posteriori internal and external evidence of the historic truth 
of the Christian religion), as to leave a sufficient portion for a 
not unprofitable series of articles for pecuniary supply. I 
entertain some hope, too, that my Logic, which I could begin 
printing immediately if I could find a publisher willing to un- 
dertake it on equitable terms, might prove an exception to the 
general fate of my publications. It is a long lane that has no 
turning, and while my own heart bears witness to the genial 
delight you would feel in assisting me, I know that you would 
have a more satisfactory gladness in my not needing it. 

And now a few, a very few, words on the latter portion of 
your letter. You know, my dearest Friend, how I acted 
myself, and that my example cannot be urged in confirmation 
of my judgment. I certainly strive hard to divest my mind of 
every prejudice, to look at the question sternly through the 
principle of Eight separated from all mere Expedience, nay, 
from the question of earthly happiness for its own sake. But 
I cannot answer to myself that the image of any serious 



LETTERS, ETC. 131 

obstacle to your peace of heart, that the Thought of your full 
development of soul being put a stop to, of a secret anxiety 
blighting your utility by cankering your happiness, I cannot 
be sure — I cannot be sure that this may not have made me 
weigh with a trembling and unsteady hand, and less than half 
the presumption of error, afforded by the shrinking and recoil 
of your moral sense or even feeling, would render it my duty 
and my impulse to bring my conclusion anew to the ordeal 
of my Eeason and Conscience. But on your side, my dear 
Friend ! irj with me to contemplate the question as a problem 
in the science of Morals, in the first instance, and to recollect 
that there are false or intrusive weights possible in the other 
scale ; that our very virtues may become, or be transformed 
into temptations to, or occasions of, partial judgment ; that 
we may judge partially against ourselves from the very fear, 
perhaps contempt, of the contrary ; that self may be moodily 
gratified by 56^?/^sacrifice, and that the Heart itself, in its per- 
plexity, may acquiesce for a time in the decision as a more 
safe way ; and, lastly, that the question can only be fully 

answered, when Self and Neighbour, as equi-distant ^^^ 

from the conscience or God, are blended in the common term, a 
Human Being : that we are commanded to love ourselves as 
our Neighbour in the Law that requires a Christian to love his 
Neighbour as himself. 

But indeed I persuade myself that this dissonance is not real 
between us, and that it would not have seemed to exist, had I 
continued the subject into the possible particular cases ; e. g.^ 
suppose a case in which the misery, and so far the moral 
incapacitation, of both parties were certainly foreseen as the 
immediate consequence. A morality of Consequences I, you 
well know, reprobate ; but to exclude the necessary effect of an 
action is to take away all meaning from the word action — to 
strike Duty with blindness, I repeat it, that I do not, cannot 
find it in myself to believe, that on any one case, made out in 



132 LETTERS, ETC. 

all its limbs, features, and circumstances, your heart and mine 
would prompt different verdicts. 

But the thought of you personally and individually is at 
present too strong and stirring to permit me to reason on any 
points. If the weather is at all plausible, we propose to set off 
on Satm^day. I do most earnestly wish that you could accom- 
pany us ; a steam- vessel would give us three-foiu-ths of the 
whole day to tete-d-tete conversation. God bless you, 

And your affectionate and faithful friend, 
T. AUsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

The affectionate interest expressed in this and the preceding 
letters was at the time to me a solace and support, placed as I 
was with relation to my immediate worldly prospects in a 
position of much perplexity. There were many circumstances 
which, as they affected others, I could not communicate so 
fully, — convey so entirely as I desired to my respected friend ; 
hence he altogether misapprehended the particular cause of my 
anxiety, or, as I doubt not, considered it irresolution and mis- 
giving. In pursuance of the determination with which I set 
out, I have not hesitated thus to place on record, opinions, 
views, and suggestions, which, had I considered myself at 
liberty to make a selection, I might have omitted, for a two- 
fold reason; one, that they concerned myself alone; the other, 
that I do not imagine they will interest general readers. I 
have adopted the plan of saying just what occurs to me at the 
time of writing and of giving the memorandums exactly as I 
find them, when I have no recollection of the circumstances ; 
and the letters exactly as they are written (unless they contain 
repetitions or expressions of attachment common to all) with 
few omissions, and those of no importance. 

I should consider it a misfortime for any one to have sug- 
gested alterations or omissions in this work, as such suggestions 
would have disturbed or have interfered with my original 
determination ; a determination to let my dear friend be known 



LETTERS, ETC. 133 

in all his strengtli and all liis weakness, as far as these letters 
and recollections convey any clear idea of either. I might 
have made this work better with some aids and with longer 
preparation, but then it would not so well have expressed what 
I sought to convey. It would not have so entirely expressed 
my own or my late friend's opinions and convictions ; and in 
this sense, though another might have made it better, no one 
but myself could have done it so well. In this view Charles 
Lamb coincided, though he, it seems, from the force of an early 
impression, never kept any letters, and therefore did not attach 
the importance which appears to me to belong to this depart- 
ment of autobiography. 

' When asked to accompany a recent deputation to remon-- 
strate with the present ministers, I assented, stating to my 
friends that I should go to read their faces, for that nature 
never lies. So it proved in this case ; their conduct being in 
harmony with the conclusions I drew and expressed at the 
time, but in strange discrepancy with what they said. So I 
hold that letters, which are the transcript of the TVTiter's mind, 
give more of interest and more insight into character than 
volumes of disquisition or sm-mises. 



'^ Eead the Troilus and Cressida ; dwelt much upon the 
fine distinction made by Shakspeare between the affection of 
Troilus and the passion of Cressida. This does not escape the 
notice of Ulysses, who thus depicts her on her first arrival in 
the Trojan camp : — 

Fie ! fie upon her ! 

There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, 
Nay, her foot speaks. Her wanton sphits look out 
At every joint of her body. Set such down 
For sluttish spoils of opportunity 
And daughters of the game/ 

" The profound affection of Troilus alone deserves the name 
of love/' 



134 

" Certainly the highest good is to live happily, and not 
through a life of mortification to expect a happy death. 
Should we attain felicity in life, death will be easy, as it will 
be natural and in due season. Whereas by the present system 
oi religious teaching^ men are enjoined to value chiefly happi- 
ness at the end of life ; which, if they were implicitly to 
follow, they would, by neglecting the first great duty, that of 
innocent enjoyment during existence, effectually preclude them- 
selves from attaining. 



" There is no condition (evil as it may be in the eye of 
reason), which does not include, or seem to include when it has 
become familiar, some good, some redeeming or reconciling 
qualities. I agree, however, that marriage is not one of these. 
Marriage has, as you say, no natural relation to love. Mar- 
riage belongs to society ; it is a social contract. It should not 
merely include the conditions of esteem and friendship, it 
should be the ratification of their manifestation. Still I do not 
know how it can be replaced ; that belongs to the future, and it 
is a question which the future only can solve. I however quite 
agree that we can now, better than at any former time, say 
what will not, what cannot be." 



" Truly, when I think of what has entered into ethics, what 
has been considered moral in the early ages of the world, and 
even now by civilised nations in the east, I incline to believe 
that morality is conventional ; but when I see the doctrines 
propounded under the name of political economy, I earnestly 
hope that it is so. — As illustrations of the opinions held by 
philosophers, which to us appear abominable or indecent, I 
refer to some of the rules of Zeno, some parts of the philosophy 
of Plato, the whole conduct of Phsedon, and the practice of 
Cato the Censor." 



LETTERS, ETC. 135 

" The Essenians for several ages subsisted by adoption : we 
shall see if the Shakers continue so long." 



^^ We shun a birth, and make a public exhibition of an exe- 
cution. The mystery observed at bhlh is a type of other 
mysteries. It is a matter of silence and secrecy, and wholly 
withheld from all but the customary officials. 



" Pythagoras first asserted that the earth was a globe, and 
that there were antipodes. He also seems to have been 
acquainted with the properties of the atmosphere, at least its 
weight and pressure. He was the most wonderful of those 
men whom Greece, that treasure-house of intellect, produced 
to show her treasures, and to be the ornament and gaze of our 
nature during all time. In his doctrines, the Copernican 
system may clearly be traced. 

'' Pythagoras used the mysteries as one of the means to 
retain the doctrine of an unity while the multitude sunk into 
Polytheism. 

" It is quite certain most of the ancient philosophers were 
adverse to the popular worship, as tending to degrade the idea 
of the Divine Being, and to defile the national manners. Idol 
worship always demoralises a people who adopt it. 

" Witness the Jews, whose idolatry was followed by 
universal chastisement. Witness Eome, Greece, and Egypt 
where idol worship led to immorality and vice of the most 
frightful kind.'' 



The following I find on the hack of a letter, 

" is one of those clerg^^men who find it more easy to 

hide their thoughts than to suppress thinking, and who treat 
the Thirty Nine Articles as the whale did Jonah, /. e, 
swallowed, but could not digest him." 



136 LETTERS, ETC. 

" Quarrels of anger ending in tears are favourable to love in 
its spring tide, as plants are found to grow very rapidly after 
a thunderstorm with rain,^^ 



" The heart in its physical sense is not sufficient for a kite^s 
dinner ; yet the whole world is not suflScient for it.^' 



" God hath from the beginning promised forgiveness to the 
penitent, but hath nowhere promised penitence to the sinner.'' 



" So Mr. Baker heart did pluck, 
And did a courting go ! 
And Mr. Baker is a buck ; 
For why ? — he needs the doeV 



*^ Oh ! there are Bome natures which, under the most cheer- 
less, all-threatening, nothing-promising circumstances, can 
draw hope from the invisible ; as the tropical trees, that in the 
sandy desolation produce their own lidded vessels full of water 
from air and dew. Alas ! to my root not a drop trickles down 
but from the water-pot of immediate friends ; and even so it 
seems much more a sympathy with their feeling rather than 
hope of my own, even as I should feel sorrow if Allsop's 
mother, whom I have never seen, were to die." 



LETTEE XXII. 

My DEAR Friend, Oct. 20, 1821. 

Not a day has passed since we left Highgate in which I 
have not been tracing you in spirit up and down the Glens and 
Dells of Derbyshire, while my feet only have been in commune 
with the sandy beach here at Eamsgate. Once when I had 
stopped and stood stone still for some minutes, Mrs. Gillman^s 



LETTERS, ETC. 137 

call snatclied me away from a spot opposite to a house, to the 
second-floor window of which I had been gazing, as if I had 
feared, yet expected, to see you passing to and fro by it. 
These, however, were visions to which I had myself given the 
commencing act — fabrics of which the '^ I wonder where AUsop 
is now" had laid the foundation stone. But for the last three 
days your image, alone or lonely in an unconcerning crowd of 
human figures, has forced itself on my sleep in dreams of the 
rememberable kind, accompanied with the feeling of being 
afraid to go up to you — and now of letting you pass by 
unnoticed, fi^om want of com^age to ask you, w^hat was most on 
my mind — respecting the one awful to me because so awfully 
dear to you — (for there is a religion in all deep love, but the 
love of a Mother is, at your age, the veil of softer light 
between the Heaii: and the Heavenly Father !) Mrs. Gillman 
likewise has been thinking of you both asleep and awake : 
and so, though I know not how to dii*ect my letter, yet a letter 
I am resolved to write. 

I am sure, my dear Friend ! that if aught can be a com- 
fort to you in affliction or an addition to your joy in the hour 
of Thanksgiving, it will be to know, and to be reminded of 
your knowledge, that I feel as your o^n heart in all that con- 
cerns you. Xext to this I have to tell you, that the Sea Air 
and the Sea Plunges, and the leisure of mind, with regular 
devotion of the Daylight to exercise (for I write only after 
tea), have been auspicious, beyond my best hopes, to my 
health and spirits. The change in my looks is beyond the 
present reality, but may be veracious as prophecy^ though 
somewhat exaggerating as history. The same in all essentials 
holds good of Mrs. Gillman ; and I am most pleased that the 
improvement in her looks and strength has been gradual 
though rapid. First she got rid, in the course of four or five 
days-, of the Positives of the wrong sort — e. g. the blackness 
under the eyes and the thinness of the cheeks — and now she is 
acquiiing the Positives of the right kind, her eyes brightening, 



138 



LETTERS, ETC. 



her face becoming plump, and a delicate, yet cool and steady 
colour, stealing upon her cheeks. Mr. Gillman too is uncom- 
monly well since his second arrival here. The first week his 
arm, the absorbents of which had been perilously poisoned by 
opening a body, was a sad drawback, and prevented his 
bathing. In short, we are all better than we could have 
anticipated ; and the better we are, the more I long, and we all 
wish you to be with us. If you can come, though but for a 
few days, I pray you come to us. In grief or gladness, we 
shall grieve less, and (I need not say) be more glad, by seeing 
you, by having you with us, I will not say write^ for I would a 
thousand times rather have you plump in on me, unannoimced ; 
but yet write, unless this be possible. We have an excellent 
house, with beds enough for half a dozen Allsops, if so many 
there were or could be. The situation the very best in all 
Eamsgate (Wellington Crescent, East Cliff, Eamsgate); and 
we, or rather Mrs. Gillman's voice and manner, procured it 
shameful cheap for the size and accommodations. 

I am called to dinner ; so God bless you, and receive all 
our loves, my very dear friend. 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T, Coleridge. 

My birth-day, 51 ; or, as all my collegiates and Mrs. 
Coleridge swear, 50. 



In reading these letters — so full of love and kindness — my 
first wish had been to keep them sacred to my own perusal, 
and to my own bitter and most painfal regrets ; but they 
contain so lively a portraiture of the writer's mind, express so 
clearly what he so entirely felt, that I have judged it meet and 
fitting, as well as an act of justice to the memory of the dead, to 
give them place. I am reminded whilst I write this of an 
opinion — I fear not altogether a heresy — of Lamb's, that all 
strong affection, whether it be love of man, to woman, or pure 
and abiding friendship between men, is not merely of no interest, 
but that it is, to a certain degree, positively distasteful to all 



LETTERS, ETC. 139 

others. As I NTOte for men as they are, not as they may be, 
or as I think they should, and yet will be, I should not have 
published these personal and individual communications during 
the life of their author under any conceivable circumstances, 
even if such publications were usual or conceivable. Adher- 
ing, therefore, to the rule I have laid dovTi for myself — to 
publish exactly that which I myself should like most to know 
of any man, in w^hom I felt sufficient interest to wish to know 
anything — I have given every letter, not in itself a repetition 
in words or tone of feeling of some preceding communication ; 
being determined not to incur justly the regret expressed in 
the Biographia Literaria, at Spratt's refusing to allow Cowley 
to appear in '• his dressing gown and slippers." 



Of the Conversations about this period I possess the follow- 
ing :— 

^^ We are none of us tolerant in what concerns us deeply and 
entirely. '^ 



" A man who admits himself to be deceived, must be conscious 
that there is something upon, or respecting which, he cannot be 
deceived. '^ 



" A man w^ho wishes for an end^ the means of which are 
criminal, is chargeable with all the guilt.'' 



^' I was told by one who was with Shelley shortly before his 
death, that he had in those moments, when his spint was left 
to prey inwards, expressed a wish, amounting to anxiety, to 
commune with me, as the one only being who could resolve or 
allay the doubts and anxieties that pressed upon his mind." 



^^ Leigh Hunt (I think he said) having stated that it was my 
opinion that Byron only made believe when he painted himself 
in his poems, Shelley expressed his fears, his belief that there 



140 LETTERS, ETC, 

was no counterfeiting, that it was too real ; that lie was a being 
incapable of true sympathy, that he was selfish and sensual 
beyond his own portraiture." 



The enclosed extract of a letter ivi'itten about this time, I 
give for the sake of the conclusion. 

" I am glad to learn that the dwellers at Eydal perceived an 
amendment in me. In seif-management, in the power of 
keeping my eyes more, and my heart less open, in aversion to 
baseness, intrigue, in detestation of apostacy, to * 

and silent or suggestive detraction it would be well for me if I 
were as I was at twenty- five. Amendment ! improvement in 
outward appearance, in health and in manners, I owe to my 
friends here ; who as they would not admit any improvement 
in innocence or blamelessness of life, so they would indignantly 
reject and repel any alteration for the worse.'' 



'' I am much delighted with Lamb's letter to Southey, I have 
read it many times ; Lamb feels firm and has taken sure 
ground." 



" I used to be much amused with Tobin and Godwin. 
Tobin would pester me with stories of Godwin's dullness ; and 
upon his departure Godwin would drop in just to say that 
Tobin was more dull than ever." 



" Mentioned many things of, and concerning, Godwin ; 
which, to me, at that time not yet familiar with the ignorance 
of the learned, with the contradictions, which I have since seen, 
between the knowledge so called and the practices of men, 
surprised me much." 

* I have now no means of supplying this hiatus. 



141 

. " Spoke in the highest terms of affection and consideration 
of Lamb. Related the circumstance which ga^e occasion to 
the ' Old Familiar Faces.' Charles Lloyd, in one of his fits, 
had shown to Lamb a letter, in which Coleridge had illustrated 
the cases of vast genius in proportion to talent and predomi- 
nance of talent in conjunction with genius, in the persons of 
Lamb and himself. Hence a temporary coolness, at the termi- 
nation of which, or during its continuance, these beautiful 
verses were written,'' 



" Jeffery, speaking of Campbell, said ' He is one of the best 
fellows in the world. If, however, he has a fault, it is that he 
is envious, and to that degree that he wishes the walls may 
fall and crush any one who may excel him. He is one of my 
most intimate friends, and with that little drawback, one of the 
best fellows in the world.' '' 



*' Spoke of the cold and calculating character of the Scotch; 
agreed that they were in this the same drunk or sober : their 
heads seemed alv^ays so full that they could not hold more, 
adding, ' We value the Scotch without however liking them ; 
and we like the Irish mthout however or^r-valuing them. 
Instanced Dr. Stoddart as having most of the unamiable traits 
of the Scotch character without the personally useful ones — 
doing dirty work for little pay.' " 



^' Came to me very much heated and fatigued, stayed to 
refresh before proceeding to Sir George Beaumont's. Had 
received a letter from Colin Mackenzie, stating that he was 
occupied in attending the Privy Council, and that he feared 
he should not be able to dine with him at Sir George Beau- 
mont's. Coleridge not being able to decipher the letter, said, 
* It is an excellently contrived kind of hand for the purpose of 
disguising false orthography. I had before this conceived 



142 LETTERS, ETC 

strong suspicions, that my good friend Colin Mackenzie could 
not spell, and they are now confirmed/ " 



*^Met Wilkie at this dinner, who expressed his opinion that 
patronage did no good but much injury. Said also, that he 
should never think painting properly estimated until a painter 
should make his fifteen, twenty, or thirty thousand a year Kke 
a man at the bar ; — an opinion which did him no service with 
Sir George Beaumont. — Speaking of the Queen's trial, I said, 

' It was a most atrocious affair.' 

^ I am delighted to hear you sanction my use of that opinion,' 
said Lady Sarah Bathurst, ' indeed it was a most ' atrocious " 
business ; and if any iniquity could withdraw the sun's light, 
that would surely have occasioned a physical, as well as moral, 
eclipse.' A general outcry ; an earnest entreaty on the part 
of Lady Sarah, put an end to this extraordinary scene." 



" Quoted with great glee, as one of the best practical jokes 
extant, if indeed a thing so good must not be true, a story 
from an old Spanish humourist which had, by some strange 
oversight or lapsus, escaped the shears of the Inquisition. 

" At the sacrament, a Priest gave, without perceiving it, a 
counter instead of a wafer. The communicant thinking it 
would melt, very patiently waited, but without effect. The 
Priest seeing him hesitate, inquired what was the matter ? 
' Matter,' said he, ^ I hope you have not made a mistake and 
given me God the Father, he is so hard and tough there is no 
swallowing him.' These stories abound in all Catholic coun- 
tries, especially in Italy. Indeed the religious of all countries 
are, in the eye of Eeason, the greatest blasphemers, seeing 
that though all affirm God made man in his own image, they 
make God after their own imaginations.^' 



LETTERS, ETC. 143 

LETTER XXIII 

My dear Friend, Ramsgate^ Nov. 2nd, 1821. 

First, let me utter the fervent, God be praised ! for tiie 
glad tidings respecting your dear Mother, which would have 
given an abounding interest to a far less interesting letter. 
May she be long preseryed both to enjoy and reward yourloye 
and piety ! And now I will try to answer the other contents 
of your letter, as satisfactonly I hope, as I am sure it vdYL be 
sincerely and affectionately. Conscious how heedfullv, how 
watchfully I cross-examined myself whether or no my anxiety 
for yom- earthly happiness and free exercise of head and heart 
had not warped the attention which it was my purpose to give 
whole and undivided to the one Question — What is the Right, 
I can repeat (with as much confidence as the slippery and Pro- 
tean nature of all self-inquisition and the great a priori like- 
lihood of my reason being tampered with by my affections, 
will sanction me in expressing) what I haye akeady more than 
once said, yiz., that I hold it incredible, at least improbable to 
the utmost extent, that you and I should decide differently in 
any one definite instance. Let a case be stated with all its 
particulars, personal and circumstantial, with its antecedents 
and involved [n, h. — not its contingent or apprehended) conse- 
quents — and my faith in the yoice within, wheneyer the heart 
desiringly listens thereto, will not allow me to fear that our 
yerdict should be diyerse. If this be true, as true it is, it 
follows — that we haye attached a different import to the same 
terms in some general proposition ; — and that, in attempting 
to generalise my convictions briefly, and yet comprehensiyely, 
I haye worded it either incorrectly or obscm^ely. On the other 
hand, your communications likevrise, my dear friend ! were 
indefinite — " taught light to counterfeit a gloom ;" and loye 
left in the dusk of twilight is apt to fear the worst, or rather, 
to think of worse than it fears, and the momentary transforma- 
tions of posts and bushes into apparitions and foot-pads must 



144 LETTERS, ETC. 

not be Interpreted as symptoms of brain fever or depraved 
vision. 

And now, my dearest AUsop ! why should it be "a melancholy 
reflection, that the three most affectionate, gentle, and estimable 
women in your world are the three from whom you have learnt 
almost to undervalue their sex?'' In other words those who 
in their reasonings have supposed as possible, not even im- 
probable, that women can be unworthy and insincere in their 
expressions of attachment to men, the frequency of which it is 
as impossible, living open-eyed, not to have ascertained, as it 
is with a heart awake to what a woman ought to be, and those 
of whom you speak substantially * are. Why should this be a 
melancholy reflection? (Thursday, Nov. 1st. A fatality seems 
to hang over this letter; I will not, however, defer the con- 
tinuation for the purpose of explaining its suspension.) Why, 
dearest friend, a melancholy reflection? Must not those 
women who have the highest sense of womanhood, who know 
what their sex may be, and who feel the rightfulness of their 
own claim to be loved with honour, and honoured with love, 
have likewise the keenest sense of the contrary ? Understand 
a few foibles as incident to humanity ; take as matters of course 
that need not be mentioned, because we know that in the least 
imperfect a glance of the womanish will shoot across the 
womanly, and there are Mirandas and Imogens, a Una, a 
Desdemona, out of fairy land ; rare, no doubt, yet less rare than 
their counterparts among men in real life. Now can such a 
woman not be conscious, must she not feel how great the 
happiness is that a woman is capable of communicating, say 
rather of being to a man of sense and sensibility, pure of heart, 
and capable of appreciating, cherishing, and repaying her 
virtues ? Can she feel this, and not shrink from the contem- 
plation of a contrary lot ? Can she know this, and not know 
what a sore evil, fearful in its heart- withering affliction in 

* Thus in original letter. 



LETTERS, ETC. 145 

proportion to tlie capacity of being blessed, a weak, artful, or 
worthless woman is — perhaps in her own experience has been ? 
And if she happen to know a young Man, know him as the 
good, and only the good, know each other — if he were precious 
to her, as a younger brother to a matron sister — and so that 
she could not dwell on his principles, dispositions, manners, 
without the thought — ^^ If I had an only daughter, and she all 
a mother ever prayed for, one other prayer should I offer — that, 
freely chosen and choosing, she should enable me to call this 
man my sonl '' would you not m.ore than pardon even an excess 
of anxiety, even an error of judgment, proceeding from a disin- 
terested dread of his taking a step irrevocable, and, if unhappy, 
miserable beyond all other misery, that of guilt alone excepted? 
Especially if there were no knov,Ti particulars to guide her 
judgment — if that judgment were given avowedly, on the mere 
iinbelieved possibility, on an unsupposed supposition of the 
Yv^orst. 

In Mrs. Gillman I have always admired, what indeed I 
have found more or less an accompaniment of womanly 
excellence wherever found, a high opinion of her own sex 
comparatively, and a partiality for female society. I know 
that her strongest prejudices against indi\ddual men have 
originated in their professed disbelief of such a thing as 
female friendship, or in some similar brutish forgetfulness that 
woman is an immortal soul ; and as to aU parts of the female 
character, so chiefly and especially to the best, noblest, and 
highest — to the germs and yearnings of immortality in the 
man. I have much to say on this, and shall now say it with 
comfort, because I can think of it as a pure Question of 
Thought. But I wiU not now keep this letter any longer. 

God bless you, and your friend, 
T. AUsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

P.S. The morning after our arrival, a card with our address 
and all our several names was delivered in at the post office 

10 



146 

and to the Postmaster ; and this morning, Monday, Oct. 29, 
I received yom' letter dated 16th, which ought to have been 
delivered on Wednesday last — lying at the Post-office while I 
was hour by hour fretting or dreaming about you. And you, 
too, must have been puzzled with mine, written on my birth- 
day. A neglect of this kind may be forgivable, but it is 
utterly inexcusable ; a Blind- worm sting that has sensibly 
quickened my circulation, and I have half a mind to write to 
Mr. Freeling, if my wrath does not subside with my pulse, 
and I should have nothing better to do. 



Earnest, affectionate, and impressive as this letter was to me, 
and must be to others, I find in it a proof, if such were not up- 
heaped and overflowing in the preceding letters, of the love and 
abounding sympathy of this wonderful being ; the more admi- 
rable as his own experience and trials had been of a nature rather 
to sear and to embitter, than to cherish and extend hope and 
the sympathetic affections. I may yet undertake a full expo- 
sition of this particular question, w^hich, though unsuited to 
this work, would be of the highest possible value, not merely 
or chiefly for those to whom it w^ould be addressed, but by 
reflex to parents and young children. The vice of the present 
day, a spurious delicacy, which exceeding all propriety is 
essentially indelicate, prevents the communication of many of 
the most valuable truths to the gentler sex, and thus tends to 
perpetuate those evils which are admitted to exist, and of 
which the removal is felt — known — to be co-existent with the 
public or open denunciation. Do I regret this delicacy ? No ; 
or if so, only as a pseudo- economist, from its rendering neces- 
sary a fresh translation of all the treasures of our ancient 
literature, not one volume of which is in accord with the 
finical expressions, with the sickly sentimentality of our modern 
reading public. To what end is this ? Are our morals more 
pure, our conduct more manly, than that of our ancestors? 



147 

I fear mucli, that judged by any fixed standard^ it will be 
found to be tbe reverse, and that the greater the fastidiousness 
the greater the real immorality. But this subject I will not 
farther pursue ; it will be more fully discussed in the expo- 
sition I contemplate, should it be necessary to prepare it. 



The subjoined fragment of an essay printed more than 
twenty years ago, and given to me T\-ith several others about 
this time, I subjoin, as being, in my opinion, and, what is of 
more worth, in the opinion of its author, of much value. 

'' The least reflection convinces us that our sensations, whether of 
pleasure or of pain, are the incommunicable parts of our nature, such 
as can be reduced to no uni\rersal rule, and in wliich, therefore, we 
have no right to expect that others should agree with us, or to blame 
them for disagreement. That the Greenlander prefers train oil to 
olive oil, and even to wine, we explain at once by our knowledge of 
the climate and productions to which he has been habituated. AYere 
the man as enlightened as Plato, his palate would still find that most 
agreeable to which he had been most accustomed. But when the 
Iroquois Sachem, after having been led to the most perfect specimens 
of architecture in Paris, said that he saw nothing so beautiful as the 
cooks' shops, we attribute this without hesitation to the savagery of 
intellect, and infer with certainty that the sense of the beautiful was 
either altogether dormant in his mind, or at best very imperfect. The 
beautiful, therefore, not originating in the sensations, must belong to 
the intellect, and therefore we declare an object beautiful and feel an 
inward right to expect that others should coincide with us. But we 
feel no right to demand it ; and this leads us to that which hitherto 
we have barely touched upon, and which we shall now attempt to 
illustrate more fully, namely, to the distinction erf the beautiful from 
the good. 

" Let us suppose Milton in company with some stern and prejudiced 
puritan, contemplating the front of York Cathedral, and at length 
expressing his admiration of its beauty. We will suppose it too, at 
that time of his life when his religious opinions, feelings and pre- 
judices more nearly coincided with those of the rigid anti-prelatists. 

*' PuRiTA^^ Beauty ! I am sure it is not the beauty of hohness. 

" Milton. True : but yet it is beautiful. 



148 LETTERS, ETC. 

" Puritan. It delights not me. What is it good for ? Is it of any 
use but to be stared at ? 

" MiLTOx. Perhaps not : but still it is beautiful. 
•* Puritan. But call to mind the pride and wanton vanity of those 
cruel shavelings that wasted the labour and substance of so many 
thousand poor creatures in the erection of this haughty pile. 
" Milton. I do. But still it is very beautiful. 

* ' Puritan. Think how many score of places of worship incom- 
parably better suited both for prayer and preaching, and how many 
faithful mrnisters might have been maintained, to the blessing of tens 
of thousands, to them and their children's children, with the treasures 
lavished on this worthless mass of stone and cement. 

^' Milton. Too true! but nevertheless it is very heautiful. 
*' Puritan. And it is not merely useless, but it feeds the pride of 
the prelates, and keeps alive the popish and carnal spirit amongst the 
people. 

" Milton. Even so : and I presume not to question the wisdom nor 
detract from the pious zeal of the first Reformers of Scotland, who for 
these reasons destroyed so many fabrics, scarce inferior in beauty to 
this now before our eyes. But I did not call it good, nor have I told 
thee, brother, that if this were levelled with the ground, and existed 
only in the works of the modeller or engraver, that I should desire to 
reconstruct it. The Grood consists in the congruity of a thing with 
the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to 
determine the latter to actualise the former, audit is always discursive. 
The Beautiful arises from the preconceived harmony of an object, 
whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutional rules of 
the judgment and imagination ; and it is always intuitive. As light 
to the eye, even such is beauty to the mind, which cannot but have 
complacency in whatever is perceived, as pre-configured to its living 
faculties. 

^' Hence the Greeks called a beautiful object KaXoVj quasi KaXovVj 
i.e., calling on the soul, which receives instantly and welcomes it as 
something con-natural.'^ 



LETTERS, ETC. 149 

LETTEK XXIV. 

Saturday Afternoon^ Nov, 17 tL 
At length, ray dear friend ! we are safe and (I hope) sound 
at Highgate. We would fain have returned, as we went, by the 
Steam- vessel, but for two reasons ; one that there was none to 
go by, the other, that Mr. Gillman thought it hazardous from 
the chance of November fogs on the river. Likewise, my dear 
Allsop, I have two especial reasons for wishing that it may be 
in your power to dine with us to morrow ; first, it will give you 
so much real pleasure to see my improved looks, and how very 
well Mrs. Gillman has come back. I need not tell you, that 
your sister cannot be dearer to you — and you are no ordinary 
brother — than Mrs. Gillman is to me ; and you will therefore 
readily understand me when I say, that I look at the manifest 
and (as it was gradual), I hope permanent change in her 
countenance, expression, and motion, with a sort of pride of 
comfort; second (and in one respect more urgent), my 
anxiety to consult you on the subject of a proposal made to 
me by Anster, before I return an answer, which I must 
do speedily. I cannot conclude without assuring you how 
important a part your love and esteem constitute of the hap- 
piness, and through that (I will yet venture to hope) of the 
utility, af your affectionate friend, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



" I have somewhere read a story of a Turk, who, when in 
Paris, was prevailed upon to turn Christian, having been 
promised plenty of wine in this life, and a Paradise of eternal 
delights in the next. He was regularly instructed in the 
doctrine of the Church of Eome, and after a time had the 
sacrament administered to him. The next day, when his 
instructor was interrogating him, he asked how many gods 
there were ? 

" ' None at all,' said Mustapha. 



150 LETTERS, ETC. 

" ^ How ! none at all ?' said the priest. 

" ^ No,' replied the sincere believer ; ^ you have always 
taught that there was only one God, and yesterday I eat him.' 

" Verily there is no absurdity, how glaring soever in the- 
ology, that has not had at one time or other believers and 
supporters amongst men of the greatest powers and most culti- 
vated minds." 



" In one respect, and in one only, are books better than con- 
versation. In a book, the mind of the wi^iter is before you, 
and you can read and re- peruse it in case of doubt, whilst in 
conversation a link once lost is irrecoverable. Thus in all 
reported conversations, unless we are intimate with the mind 
of the person speaking, we often draw a wrong conclusion, and 
attribute that to discontent, to envy, or some other unworthy 
feeling, which, if we were in possession of the author's reasons 
and feelings, we should sympathise with, if indeed we did not 
in every case acquiesce in, his conclusions.'' 



" In order to escape the government regulations, and with a 
view to contribute as little as possible to a war against freedom, 
it was decided that I should publish the ' Watchman' every 
eighth day, by which the stamp duty became unnecessary — 
was, in fact, evaded." 



"When my friend was with me, I one day, about this time, 
placed in his hands a volume of Letters from Swift, Boling- 
broke. Pope ; and it was indeed delightful to hear him read 
and comment upon these very interesting records of the 
thoughts, feelings, and principles which actuated and impelled 
the distinguished men of a hundred years ago. 

Bolingbroke, always my favourite, was, in his letters at 
least, the first in my friend's estimation. He dwelt with 
affectionate and almost reverential interest upon the few manly, 



LETTERS, ETC. 151 

philosoplilcalj yet easy and graceful^ letters and half letters in 
this collection. Entirely agreeing as I do with Lamb in the 
opinion, that Coleridge gaye yalue to what he read, and that, 
if not for the writer's, yet for ids sake, you admired it, — I will 
gratify myself by giving a few of the passages upon which my 
friend dwelt mth most onction, 

POPE TO SWIFT. 

*' Dawley, 
** I now hold the pen for my Lord Bolingbroke, who is reading your 
letter between two hay-cocks ; but Ms attention is somewliat diverted 
by casting his eyes to the clouds, not in admiration of what you say, 
but for fear of a shower. He is pleased with your placing him in the 
triumyirate between yourself and me, though he says that he doubts 
he shall fare like Lepidus, while one of us runs away with all the 
power like Augustus, and another with all the pleasures like Antony. 
His great temperance and economy are so signal, that the first is fit 
for my constitution, and the latter would enable you to lay up so 
much money as to buy a bishopric in England. As to the retiu'n of 
his health and vigour, you might inquire of his hay-makers ; but as 
to his temperance, I can answer that, for one whole day, we have had 
nothing for dinner but mutton broth, beans and bacon, and a barn- 
door fowl. 

" Now his lordship is run after his cart, &c." 



SWIFT TO POPE, 

'' Dublin. 
*' You give a most melancholy account of yourself, and which I do 
not approve. I reckon that a man, subject like us to bodily infirmi- 
ties, should only occasionally converse with great people, notwith- 
standing all their good qualities, easinesses, and kindnesses. There is 
another race which I prefer before them, as beef and mutton for 
constant diet before partridges ; I mean a middle kind both for under- 
standing and fortune, who are perfectly ea^y, never impertinent, 
complying in every thing, ready to do a hundred Httle offices that you 
and I may often want ; who dine and sit with me five times for once that 
I go to them, and whom I can tell, without offence, thai I am otherwise 
engaged at present " 



152 LETTEKS, ETC. 

POPE TO SWIFT. 

" London, 
*' At all events, your name and mine shall stand linked as friends to 
posterity, both in prose and verse ; and (as Tully calls it) in consuetu- 
dine studiorum. Would to God our persons could but as well, and as 
surely, be inseparable ! I find my other ties dropping from me ; some 
worn off, some torn off, and others relaxing daily : my greatest, both 
by duty, gratitude, and humanity, Time is shaking every moment, 
and it now hangs but by a thread ! / am many years the older for living 
with one so old; much the more helpless for having been so long helped 
and tended by her ; and much the more considerate and tender, for a 
daily commerce with one who required me justly to be both to her ; 
and consequently the more melancholy and thoughtful, and the less 
fit for others, who want only in a friend or companion to be amused 
or entertained. 

* * « ■» 

*' As the obtaining the love of valuable men is the happiest end 
I know of in this life, so the next felicity is to get rid of fools and 
scoundrels." 



bolingbroke to swift. 
*' Dear Swift, 

" Take care of your health : I'll give you a receipt for it, a la 
Montaigne; or, which is better, a la Bruyere. 

*' ' Nourisser bien votre corps; ne le fatiguer jamais : laisser rouiller 
1' esprit, meuble inutil, votre outil dangereux: laisser souper nos 
cloches le matin pour eveiller les chanoines, et pour faire dormir le 
doyen d'un sommeil doux et profond, qui lui procure de beaux songes ; 
levez vous tard,^ &c. &c. I am in my farm, and here I shoot strong 
and tenacious roots ; I have caught hold of the earth (to use a gar- 
dener's phrase), and neither my friends nor my enemies will find it an 
easy matter to transplant me again. 



SWIFT TO POPE. 

*' I have conversed with some freedom with more ministers of state 
of all parties than usually happens to men of my level ; and I confess, 
in their capacity of ministers, / look upon them as a race of people 
whose acquaintance no man would court, otherwise than upon the score of 
vanity or ambition. 

*' As to what is called a revolution of principle, my opinion was this, 



LETTERS, ETC. 153 

— that whenever those evils which usually attend and follow a violent 
change of government, were not in prohahility so jpernicious as the griev- 
ance we suffer under a present power, then the public good vnll justify 
such a revolution, 

" I had likewise in those days a mortal antipathy against standing 
armies in times of peace ; because I always took standing armies to 
be only servants hired by the master of the family for keeping his own 
children in slavery, and because I conceived that a prince, who could 
not think himself secure without mercenary troops, must needs have 
a separate interest from that of his subjects ; although I am not 
ignorant of those artificial necessities which a corrupted ministry can 
create, for keeping up forces to support a faction against the public 
interest. 

" As to ParKament, I adored the wisdom of that Gothic institution 
which made them annual ; '^ and I was confident our liberty could 
never be placed upon a firm foundation until that ancient law were 
restored among us : for who sees not that, while such assemhlies are 
permitted to have a longer duration^ there grows up a commerce of cor- 
ruption between the ministers and the deputies, wherein they both find 
their accounts, to the manifest danger of liberty f — which traffic would 
neither answer the design nor expense if Farliament met once a year, 

" I ever abominated that scheme of politics (now about thirty years 
old) of setting up a monied interest in opposition to the landed : for 
I conceived there could not be a truer maxim in our government than 
this, — that the possessors of the soil are the best judges of what is for 
the advantage of the kingdom. 

^ -k' ^ * * ;?: 

" I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and 
all my love is towards individuals : for instance, I hate the tribe of 
lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one. 
But principally I hate and detest that animal man^ although I love 
Peter, John, Thomas, and so forth. I have got materials towards a 
treatise, proving the falsity of that definition, ' animal ratione,' and 
to show it should be only ' rationis capax.' Upon this great foundation 
of misanthropy (though not in Timon's manner) the whole building of 
my travels is erected. The matter is so clear that it will admit of no 
dispute. 

'' Dr. Arbuthnot likes the Projectors (in Gulliver's Travels) least ; 
others you tell me the Flying Island ; some think it wrong to be so 

* This from Swift— the Arch Tory I 



154 LETTERS, ETC. 

hard upon whole bodies or corporations ; yet the general opinion is, 
that reflections on particular persons are most to be blamed : in these 
cases, I think the best method is to let censure and opinion take their 
course. A Bishop here said that booh was full of improhahle lies ; and 
for his part, he hardly believed a word of it. So much for Gulliver. 

*' I hope my Whitehall landlord is nearer to a place than when I 
left him : as the preacher said " the day of judgment was nearer than 
ever it had been before,'^* 



POPE TO SWIFT. 

*' I often imagine, if we all meet again after so many varieties and 
changes, after so much of the old world and the old man in each of us 
has been altered, that scarce a single thought of the one any more 
than a single atom of the other remains the same. I have fancied, I 
say, that we shall meet like the righteous in the Millenium, quite in 
peace, divested of all our former passions, smiling at our past follies, 
and content to enjoy the kingdom of the just in tranquillity ; but I 
find you would rather be employed as an avenging angel of wrath, to 
break your vial of indignation over the heads of the wretched 
creatures of this world. 

^ Jp* n* *!• ^ *f* 

'' I enter as fully as you can desire into the principle of your love 
of individuals ; and I think the way to have a public spirit is first to 
have a private one ; for who can believe that any man can care for a 
hundred thousand men who never cared for one ? No ill-humoured 
man can ever be a patriot any more than a friend. 

J|C 5jC 5jC 3|i 9|» ^ 

" I take all opportunities of justifying you against these friends, 
especially those who know all you think or write, and repeat your 
slighter verses. It is generally on such little scraps that witlings 
feed ; and it is hard that the world should judge of our housekeeping 
from what we fling to the dogs.''^ 

^ ^ 3|C 'I* 5^ 5f» 

*' My lord, in the first part of the letter, has spoken justly of his 
lady ; why not I of my mother ? Yesterday was her birthday, now 
entering on the ninety-first year of her age, her memory much 
diminished, but her senses very little hurt, her sight and hearing 
good ; she sleeps not ill, eats moderately, drinks water, says her 
prayers ; this is all she does. I have reason to thank God for con- 
tinuing so long to me a very good and tender parent, and for allowing 



155 

rae to exercise for some years those cares wliicli are now as necessary 
to her as liers have been to me. 

" An object of this sort daily before one's eyes very much softens 
the mind, but, perhaps, may hinder it from the willmgness of con- 
tracting other ties of the like domestic nature, when one finds how 
painful it is even to enjoy the tender pleasures. I have formerly 
made some strong efibrts to get and deserve a friend ; perhaps it were 
wiser never to attempt it, but live extempore^ and look upon ike world 
only as a place to pass through, just pay your hosts their due, disperse a 
little charity, and hurry on. 

* « « « « 

*' While we do live we must make the best of life. 
'' * Cantantes licet usque (minus via Isedet) eamus,' as the shepherd 
said in Yirgil when the road was long and heavy. 

* • # * * 

*' Can you possibly think he can neglect you ? If you catch your- 
self thinking such nonsense, your parts are decayed ; for, believe me, 
great geniuses must and do esteem one another, and I question if any 
others can esteem or comprehend uncommon merit. Others only guess at 
that merit, or see glimmerings of their minds ; a genius has the intuitive 
faculty ; therefore, imagine what you will, you cannot be so sure of 
any man's esteem as of his. If I can think that neither he nor you 
despise me, it is a greater honour to me by far, and will be thought 
so by posterity, than if all the House of Lords writ commendatory 
verses upon me, the Commons ordered me to print my works, the 
Universities gave me public thanks, and the King, Queen, and Prince 
crowned me with laurel. You are a very ignorant man ; you do not 
know the figure his name and yours will make hereafter. I do, and 
will preserve all the materials I can that I was of your intimacy. 
LongOf sed proximus, intervallo, 

>!i * * * 

'* The world will certainly be the better for his (Lord Bolingbroke's) 
change of life. He seems, in the whole turn of his letters, to be a 
settled and principled philosopher, thanking Fortune for the tran- 
quillity he has been forced into by her aversion, like a man driven by a 
violent wind, into a calm harbour. The most melancholy efi'ect of years 
is that you mention, the catalogue of those we loved, and have lost, 
perpetually increasing. You ask me if I have got a supply of new 
friends to make up for those who are gone ? I think that impossible ; 
for not our friends only, but so much of ourselves is gone by the mere 
flux and course of years, that, were the same friends restored to us, we 



156 LETTERS, ETC. 

could not he restored to ourselves to enjoy them. But as, when the con- 
tinual washing of a river takes away our flowers and plants, it throws 
weeds and sedges in their room, so the course of time brings us some- 
thing as it deprives us of a great deal, and instead of leaving us what 
we cultivated, and expected to flourish and adorn us, gives us only 
what is of some little use by accident. Thus, I have acquired a few 
chance acquaintance of young men who look rather to the past age 
than the present, and therefore the future may have some hopes of 
them. I find my heart hardened and blunted to new impressions; it will 
scarce receive or retain affections of yesterday, and those friends who have 
been dead these twenty years are more present to me now than those I 
see daily. 

^ ^ * % 

*' I am rich enough, and can afford to give away £100 a year. I 
would not crawl .upon the earth without doing a little good. I will 
enjoy the pleasure of what I give, hy giving it alive, and seeing another 
enjoy it, VYhen I die, I should be ashamed to leave enough for a 
monument, if there were a wanting friend above ground J^ 



SWIFT TO BOLINGBROEE. 

'' My Lord,— I have no other notion of economy than that it is the 
parent of liberty and ease, and I am not the only friend you have who 
have chid you in his heart for the neglect of it, though not with his 
mouth as I have done. And, my lord, I have made a maxim that 
should be writ in letters of diamonds, — That a wise man ought to have 
money in his head, but not in his heart. I am sorry for Lady Boling - 
broke's ill-health ; but I protest I never knew a very deserving person 
of that sex who had not too much reasoD to complain of ill health.* 
I never wake without finding life a more insignificant thing than it 
was the day before ; but my greatest misery is recollecting the scene 
of twenty years past, and then all of a sudden dropping into the present, 
I remember, lohen I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of my 
line, which I drew up almost on the ground, but it dropt in, and the 
disappointment vexes me to this very day, and I believe it was the type 
of all my future disappointments. 



* Is not this an additional ground, if any more were needed, in 
support of the conclusion that all men, and indeed all women, who 
have been very remarkable or very loveable, owe the original tendency 
x)f their characters to j?7i^5icaZ structure. 



LETTERS, ETC. 157 

'^ I tell you it is almost incredible how opinions cliange by the 

decline or decay of spirits. 

***** 

'^ I was forty-seven years old when I began to think of death, and 
the reflections upon it now begin when I wake in the morning, and 
end when I am going to sleep. 

'' My Lord, what I would have said of fame is meant of fame which 
a man enjoys in this life, because I cannot be a great lord I would 
xequire a kind of subsidium. I would endeavour that my betters 
should seek me, by being in something distinguishable, instead of my 
seeking them. The desire of enjoying it in aftertime is owing to the 
spirit and folly of youth ; but with age we learn to know that the 
touse is so full that there is no room for above one or two at most in 
an acre throus'h the whole world. 



BOLI^'G-BEOKE TO SWIFT, 

^' I am under no apprehension that a glut of study and retirement 
should cast me back into the huny of the world ; on the contrary, 
the single regret which I ever feel, is, that I fell so late into this 
course of life ; my philosophy grows confirmed by habit, and if you 
and I meet again, I will extort this approbation from you ; ' Jam non 
consilio bonus, sed more eo perductus, ut non tantum recte facere 
possim, sed nisi recte facere non possim.' The incivilities I meet with 
from opposite parties have been so far from rendering me violent or 
sour to any, that I think myself obliged to them all : some have 
cured me of my fears by showing me how impotent the world is ; 
others have cured me of my hopes by showing how precarious popular 
friendships are ; all have cured me of surprise. In driving me out of 
party they have driven me out of cursed company ; and in stripping me 
of titles, and rank, and estate, and such trinkets, loliich every man that 
vnll, may spare, they have given me that which no m.an can he happy vdthout, 

" Perfect tranquillity is the general tenor of my life ; good diges- 
tion, serene weather, wind me above it now and then, but I never fall 
below it ; I am sometimes gay, hut I am never sad. As soon as I leave 
this town I shall fall back into that course of Kfe which keeps knaves 
and fools at a great distance from me : I have an aversion to them 
both, but in the ordinary course of life I think I can bear the sensible 
knave better than the fool. One must, indeed, with the former, be in 
some or other of the attitudes of those wooden men whom I have seen 
before a sword-cutler's shop in G-ermany : but even in those con- 



158 LETTERS, ETC. 

strained postures the witty rascal will divert me, and he that diverts 
me does me good, and lays me under an obligation to him, which I 
am not obliged to pay in any other coin ; the fool obliges me to be 
almost as much upon my guard as the knave, and he makes me no 
amends ; he numbs me like the torpor or teases me like a fly. 

** I used to think sometimes formerly of old age and of death enough 
to prepare my mind, not enough to anticipate sorrow, to dash the joys 
of youth, and be all my life a dying. I find the benefit of this prac- 
tice now, and find it more as I proceed on my journey ; little regret 
when I look backwards, little apprehension when I look forward. 
***** * 

*' You know that I am too expensive, and all mankind knows that 
I have been cruelly plundered ; and yet I feel in my mind the power 
of descending without anxiety two or three stages more. In short, 
Mr. Dean, if you will come to a certain farm in Middlesex, you shall find 
that I can live frugally without growling at the world or being peevish 
with these whom fortune has appointed to eat my bread, instead of appoint- 
ing me to eat theirs ; and yet I have naturally as little disposition to 
frugality as any man alive. — I am sure you like to follow reason, not 
custom ; through this medium you will see few things to be vexed at, 
few persons to be angry at ; and yet there will frequently be things 
which we ought to wish altered, and persons whom we ought to wish 
hanged. 

*' In your letter to Pope, you agree that a regard for fame becomes 
a man more towards his exit than at his entrance into life, and yet 
you confess that the longer you live the more you are indifi*erent 
about it. Your sentiment is true and natural ; your reasoning, I am 
afraid, is not so on this occasion. Prudence will make us desire fame, 
because it gives us many real and great advantages in aU the affairs 
of life. Fame is the wise man's means ; his ends are his own good, and the 
good of Society. Your poets and orators have inverted this order ; you 
propose fame as the end, and good, or at least great actions as the means. 
You go farther ; you teach our self-love to anticipate the applause 
which we suppose will be paid by posterity to our names, and with 
idle notions of immortality you turn other heads besides your own. 

Fame is an object which men pursue successfully by various and 
even contrary courses. Your doctrine leads them to look on this end 
as essential, and on the means as indiff'erent ; so that Fabricius and 
Crassus, Cato and Csesar, pressed forward to the same goal. After all, 
perhaps it may appear from the depravity of mankind, that you could 
do no better, nor keep up virtue in the world, without calKng up this 



LETTERS, ETC. 159 

passion or this direction of self-love to your aid. Tacitus lias crowned 
this excuse for you, according to his manner, into a maxim, con- 
temptufamce, contemni virtutes. 

* * * * m « 

** I know not whether the love of fame increases as we advance in 
age ; sure I am that the force of friendship does. I loved you almost 
twenty years ago ; I thought of you as well as I do now, better was 
beyond the power of conception, or, to avoid an equivoque, beyond 
the extent of my ideas. Whether you are more ohliged to me for loving 
you as ivell when I knew you less, or for loving you as well after loving 
you so many years ^ I shall not determine. What I would say is this : 
whilst my mind grows daily more independent of the world, and feels 
less need of leaning on external objects, the ideas of friendship return 
oftener ; they busy me, they warm me more. Is it that we grow more 
tender as the moment of our great separation approaclies ? or is it that 
they who are to live together in another state (for vera amicitia non 
nisi inter hones') begin to feel more strongly that divine sympathy 
which is to be the great band of their future society ? There is no 
one thought which soothes my mind like this \ I encourage my ima- 
gination to pursue it, and am heartily afflicted when another faculty* 
of the intellect comes boisterously in, and wakes me from so pleasing 
a dream, if it be a dream. 

" I will dwell no more on economics than I have done in my former 
letter ; thus much only will I say, that otium cum dignitate is to be 
had with £500 as well as with £5,000 a year ; the differeyice will he 
found in the value of the man, not of the estate, 

♦ * * * * 

" I have sometimes thought that if preachers, hangmen, and moral 
writers, keep vice at a stand, or so much as retard its progress, they 
do as much as human nature admits. A real reformation is not to be 
brought about by ordinary means ; it requires those extraordinary 
means which become punishments as well as lessons. National cor- 
ruption must be purged by national calamities. 

* * sfc * * 

*' I was ill in the beginning of the winter for near a week, but in 
no danger either from the distemper or from the attendance of three 
physicians. Since that I have had better health than the regard I 
have paid to health deserves. We are both in the decline of life, my 
dear Dean, and have been some years going down the hill ; let us make 

* Reason. 



160 LETTERS, ETC. 

the passage as smooth as we can ; let us fence against physical evil 
by care, and the use of those means which experience must have 
pointed out to us ; let us fence against moral evil by philosophy. The 
decay of passion strengthens philosophy ; for passion may decay and 
stupidity not succeed. What hurt does age do us in subduing what we 
toil to subdue all our lives ? It is now six o'clock in the morning ; I recall 
the time (I am glad it is over) when about this hour I used to be 
going to bed, surfeited with pleasure or jaded with husiness; my head 
often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anxieties. 

'' Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rise at this hour refreshed, 
serene, calm? that the past and even the present affairs of life stand 
like objects at a distance from me, where I can keep off the disagree- 
able so as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can 
draw the others nearer to me ? Passions in their force would bring 
all these, nay even future contingencies, about my ears at once, and 
reason would but ill defend me in the scuffle. 

;^ * * * * 

'' My wife says she would find strength to nurse you if you was 
here ; and yet, God knows she is extremely weak. The slow fever 
works under, and mines the constitution. We keep it off sometimes, 
but still it returns and makes new breaches before nature can repair 
the old ones. I am not ashamed to say to you, that I admire her 
more every hour of my life. Death is not to her the King of Terrors ; 
she beholds him without the least fear. When she suffers much, she 
washes for him as a deliverer from pain ; when life is tolerable, she 
looks on him with dislike, because he is to separate her from those 
friends to whom she is more attached than to life itself. — You shall 
not stay for my next as long as you have done for this letter ; and in 
every one Pope shall write something better than the scraps of old 
philosophers, which were the presents, munuscula, that stoical fop, 
Seneca, used to send in every epistle to his friend Lucilius. 

'' As to retirement and exercise, your notions are true ; the first 
should not be indulged in so much as to render us savages, nor the last neg- 
lected so much as to impair health; but I know men who, for fear of 
being savage, live with all who will live with them ; and who, to pre- 
serve their health, saunter away half their time." 



LETTERS, ETC. 161 

LETTEE XXV. 

My dear Friend, Monday Morning. 

Ab HYdi^omania, Hydrophobia : from Water-lust comes 
Watei'-di'ead. But this is a violent metaphor, and disagree- 
able to boot. Suppose then, by some caprice or colic of nature, 
an Aqueduct split on this side of the slider or Sluice-gate, the 
two parts removed some thirty feet fi'om each other, and the 
communication kept up only by a hollovr reed split lengthways, 
of just enough \;\idth and depth to lay one's finger in ; the 
likeness would be fantastic to be sure, but still it would be no 
inapt likeness or emblem of the state of mind in which I feel 
myself as often as I have just received a letter from you! — 
and when, after the first flush of interest and rush of thoughts 
stiiTed up by it, I sit down, or am about to sit down, to w^rite 
in answer, a poor fraction, or finger-breadth of the intended 
reply fills up three-fomths of my paper ; so, sinking under the 
impracticabiKty of saying what seemed of use to say, I 
substitute what there is no need to say at all — the expression 
of my washes, and the Love, Eegard, and x\ffection, in which 
they originate. 

For the futm-e, therefore, I am determined, whenever I have 
any time, however short, to TVTite whatever is first in mind, 
and to send it off in the self- same hour. 

I do not know whether I was most affected or delighted 
with your last letter. It will endear Flower de Luce Court 
to me above all other remembrances of past efforts ; and the 
pain, the restless aching, that comes instantly with the thought 
of giving out my soul and spirit where you cannot be present, 
where I could not see your beloved countenance glistening 
with the genial 5pra^ of the outpom-ing; this, in conjunction 
with your anxiety and that of Mr. and Mrs. Gillman concern- 
ing my health, is the most efficient, I may say, imperious of 
the retracting influences as to the Dublin scheme. 

Basil Montagu called on me yesterday. I could not but be 

11 



162 

amused to hear from him, as well as from Mrs. Chisholm and 
two other visitors, the instantaneous expression of surprise at 
the apparent change in my health, and the certain improve- 
ment of my looks. One lady said, " Well ! Mr. Coleridge 
really is very handsome." 

Highgate is in high feud with the factious stir against the 
governors of the chapel, one of whom I was advising against 
a reply addressed to the inhabitants as an inconsistency, " But, 
sir, we would not carry any thing to an extreme ! " This is 

THE DARLING WATCH-WORD OF WEAK MEN, wllCn they Sit 

down on the edges of two stools. Press them to act on fixed 
principles^ and they talk of extremes ; as if there were or could 
be any way of avoiding them but by keeping close to a fixed 
principle, which is a principle only because it is the one medium 
between two extremes, 

God bless you, my ever dear friend, and 

Your affectionately attached 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

P.S. Our friend Gillman sees the factious nature and origin 
of the proceedings in so strong a light, and feels so indignantly, 
that I am constantly afraid of his honesty spirting out to his 
injury. If I had the craft of a Draughtsman, I would paint 
Gillman in the character of Honesty, levelling a pistol (with 
" Truth " on the barrel) at Sutton, in the character of Modern 
Eeform, and myself as a Dutch Mercury,* with rod in hand, 

hoveling aloft, and pouring water into the touchhole. 

The superscription might be " Pacification," a little finely pro- 
nounced on the first syllable. 



The passage in italics, at the close of the last letter, may 
now fitly be applied to the present unsorted or mis -sorted 

* Mercury, the god of lucre and selfish ends, patron god of thieves, 
tradesmen, stock-jobbers, diplomatists^ pimps, harlots and go-betweens: 
the soothing, pacifying god. 



LETTERS, ETC. 163 

ministry ; tliougli tlie possibility of such men being, by any 
conjunction of circumstances, placed in a situation to influence 
the destinies of a mighty nation in its struggles for self- 
government, never, in the most extravagant mood of the Poet's 
mind, occurred to him. If the old Chancellor Oxenstiern 
chided his sons under-estimation of himself and over-estimate 
of others, by telling him '•' to go and see "with how little wisdom 
the world is governed," what words would he have used had 
he wished to express a correct notion of our rulers f Either 
we have no choice, or not the wisdom to choose aright. At 
the moment that a modification or the abolition of the Peerage 
is sought, we have a Government consisting of Peers, or sons 
of Peers ; a Government, the necessity of whose existence pre- 
cludes their cariying reform beyond the point to which they 
are pledged, if indeed they have any intention to go even that 
length. This is the parent defect in oiu' present social con- 
dition ; and until we shall have virtue and self-reliance enough 
to place power in the middle classes at first, and in all classes 
almost immediately after, the onward progress will be slow, and 
exposed to the greatest danger, by the occrn'rence of any 
adverse circumstances. 

I am well aware that the " greatest and wisest minds are 
those of whom the world hears least ;" still, when it is our 
interest to be well governed, we shall seek and choose for our- 
selves, and distrust those who seek us. / speak advisedly : m 
the district in which I reside, self-government has been 
obtained ; and I speak from observation, and a thorough know- 
ledge of its results, w^hen I say, that imperfect as it is at 
present (and chiefly so from the inferior circumstances by 
which it is environed), yet that its superiority in practice is in 
the highest degree satisfactory to those who have watched its 
progress and seen its results. "When the basis upon which 
representation is foimded is extended to alh then all T\ill have 
an interest in good Government ; and this so far from being to 
be feared, is of all things the most to be desired. In propor- 



164 LETTERS, ETC. 

tion as power is diffused, the rewards of public service lessened 
and its labours increased^ will tlie public be served well ; and 
the public functionary will become the mere organ for the 
expression of the universal public will. 

If this were an untried scheme, it would be well to urge 
caution ; but when we know that it is in existence, and that 
practically it acts well, it is discreditable to our public spirit, 
and to the character of our age, that self-government has not 
been adopted, or that approximation to this desirable state has 
not taken place to a much greater extent. 



^'- On one occasion Godwin took me to Purley, where we 
met Sir Francis Burdett. Altogether, during the whole day, 

' The feast of reason and the flow of soul ' 
was without drawback. It was indeed an Attic Feast. 

^^ I was pressed to go again. I went : but how changed ! 
No longer did I see gentlemen or scholars, I only saw 
drunkards, who to obscenity, scurrility, and malignity, added 
every species of grossness and impurity. I had been in the 
company of sceptics, of Pyrrhonists, but never before had I 
seen wickedness exhibited so completely without disguise, and 
in all its naked deformity. 

'' The only emulation was, which could utter the most sense- 
less, the most horrid impurities, uttered in all the uproarious 
mirth and recklessness of lost souls. I became sick ; I left the 
room and got into a hackney coach, which happened to be at 
the door. I was followed by Sir Francis Burdett, who 
earnestly entreated me to visit him at Wimbledon. I made 
no promise, nor did I ever go, and I now blame myself that 
political predilections should have hindered me from visiting 
him, as it is possible I might have assisted, if not to reclaim, 
to recall at least the truant energies of one who, in spite of my 
disgust at the orgies in which he participated, so respectfully 
entreated me.'' 



LETTERS, ETC. 165 

I find the following lines amongst my papers^ in my own 
writing, but whether an unfinished fragment, or a contribution 
to some friend's production, I know not. 

'* AYhat boots to tell how o'er his grave 
She wept, that would have died to save ; 
Little they know the heart, who deem 
Her sorrow but an infant's dream 

Of transient love begotten ; 
A passing gale, that as it blows 
Just shakes the ripe drop from the rose — 
That dies, and is forgotten. 

Oh woman ! nurse of hopes and fears. 
All lovely in thy spring of years, 

Thy soul in blameless mirth possessing ; 
Most lovely in affliction's tears, 

More lovely still those tears suppressing." 



LETTEE XXVL 

Deakest Friend, January 26th, 1822. 

My main reason for wishing that Mrs. Gillman should have 
made her call on Mrs. Allsop, or that Mrs. AUsop would waive 
the ceremony, and taking the willingness for the act, and the 
prsesens in rus (if Highgate deserves that name) for the future 
in urbe, would accompany you hither, on the earliest day con- 
venient to you both, is, that I cannot help feeling the old 
inkling to press you to spend the Sunday with me, and yet feel 
a something like impropriety in so doing. Speaking confi- 
dentially, et inter nosinet, if it were prognosticable that dear 
Charles would be half as delightful as when we were last with 
him, and as pleasant relatively to the probable impressions on 
a stranger to him as Mary always is, I should still ask you to 
fulfil our first expectation. As it is, I must be content to wish 
it ; and leave the rest to your knowledge of the circumstantial 
pro's and con's. Only remember, that what is dear to you 



166 LETTERS, ETC. 

becomes dear to me, and that whatever can in the least add to 
happiness in which you are interested, is a duty which I cannot 
neglect without injury to my own. I am convinced that your 
happiness is in your own possession. 

One part of your letter gave me exceeding comfort — that in 
which you spoke of the peculiar sentiment awakened or inspired 
at first sight. This is an article of my philosophic creed. 

And now for my pupil schemes. Need I say that the verdict 
of your judgment, after a sufficient hearing, would determine 
me to abandon a plan of the expediency and probable result of 
which I was less sceptical than I am of the present ? But first 
let me learn from you whether you had before your mind, at 
the moment that you formed your opinion, the circumstance of 
my being already in some sort engaged to one pupil already : 
that with Mr. Stutfield and Mr. Watson I have already pro- 
ceeded on two successive Thursdays, and completed the 
introduction and the first chapter, amounting to somewhat 
more than a closely-printed octavo sheet, requiring no such 
revision as would render transcription necessary ; and that 
three or four more young men at the table wiU make no 
addition, or rather no change. Mr. Gillman thought my 
agreeing to receive Stutfield advisable. Mrs. G. did not 
indeed influence me by any express wish, but thought that this 
was the most likely way in which my work would proceed with 
regularity and constancy ; in short, it was, or seemed to be, a 
bird in the hand^ that, in conjunction with other rehable 
resources, would remove my anxiety with regard to the 
increasing any positive pressure on their finances of former 
years ; so that if I could not lessen, I should prevent the deficit 
from growing. On all these grounds I did — I need not say 
down right — engage myself, but I certainly permitted Mr. 
Stutfield to make the trial in such a form that I scarcely know 
whether I can, in the spirit of the expectation I excited, be the 
first to cry off^ he appearing fully satisfied and in good earnest. 
Now, supposing this to be the state of the case, how would my 



LETTERS, ETC. 167 

work fare the better by dictating it to two amanuenses instead 
of five or six, if I get so many ? For the occasional explana- 
tions, and the necessity of removing difficulties and misappre- 
hensions, are a real advantage in a work which I am peculiarly 
solicitous to have '' level with the plainest capacities.' ' To be 
sure, on the other hand, I might go on three days in the week 
instead of one, and let the work outrun the lectures, but just so 
I might on the plan of an increased number of auditors ; and 
secondly, so many little obstacles start up when it is not /org - 
known that on such a day I must do so and so. I need not 
explain myself further. You can understand the ^^ I would not 
ask you, but it is only — '' " and but that — " '^ I pray do not 
take any time about it,'' &c., &c., added to my startings off. 

If I do not see you on Sunday, do not fail to write to me, 
for of course I shall take no step till I am quite certain that 
your judgment is satisfied one way or other, for I am with 
unwrinkled confidence and inmost reclination. 

Your affectionate friend, 

S. T. Coleridge. 
T. AUsop, Esq. 



I have preserved the prospectus of a course of Lectures 
which were delivered in Flower de Luce Court in 1^18, and 
were constantly thronged by the most attentive and intelligent 
auditory I have ever seen. This prospectus I insert. I wish 
the same care had been taken of the notes made at the time. 
I still cling to the hope that I shall recover them, or that the 
notes said to have been taken by a reporter will be made 
available in the forthcoming biography. 



^^ Prospectus of a Course of Lectures hy S. T. Coleridge, 

•' There are few families at present in the higher and middle classes 
of English society, in which literary topics and the productions of the 
Fine Arts, in some one or other of their various forms, do not occa- 
sionally take their turn in contributing to the entertainment of the 



168 LETTERS, ETC. 

social board, and the amusement of the circle at the fire-side. The 
acquisitions and attainments of the intellect ought, indeed, to hold a 
very inferior rank in our estimation, opposed to moral worth, or even 
to professional and specific skill, prudence, and industry. But why 
should they he opposed^ when they may be made subservient merely 
hj hQmg suhordinated 9 It can rarely happen that a man of social 
disposition, altogether a stranger to subjects of taste (almost the only 
ones on which persons of both sexes can converse with a common 
interest), should pass through the world without at times feeling 
dissatisfied with himself. The best proof of this is to be found in the 
marked anxiety which men who have succeeded in life without the 
aid of these accomplishments show in securing them to their children. 
A young man of ingenuous mind will not wilfully deprive himself of 
any species of respect. He will wish to feel himself on a level with 
the average of the society in which he lives, though he may be 
ambitious of distinguishing himself only in his own immediate pursuit 
or occupation, 

"Under this conviction, the following Course of Lectures was 
planned. The several titles will best explain the particular subjects 
and purposes of each ; but the main objects proposed, as the result of 
all, are the two following : — 

*' I. To convey, in a form best fitted to render them impressive at 
the time, and remembered afterwards, rules and principles of sound 
judgment, with a kind and degree of connected information, such as 
the hearers, generally speaking, cannot be supposed likely to form, 
collect, and arrange for themselves, by their own unassisted studies. 
It might be presumption to say that any important part of these 
Lectures could not be derived from books ; but none, I trust, in sup- 
posing, that the same information could not be so surely or conve- 
niently acquired from such books as are of commonest occurrence, or 
with that quantity of time and attention which can be reasonably 
expected, or even wisely desired, of men engaged in business and the 
active duties of the world. 

'' II. Under a strong persuasion that little of real value is derived 
by persons in general from a wide and various reading ; but still more 
deeply convinced as to the actual mischief of unconnected and pro- 
miscuous reading, and that it is sure, in a greater or less degree, to 
enervate even where it does not likewise inflate, I hope to satisfy 
many an ingenuous mind, seriously interested in its own development 
and cultivation, how moderate a number of volumes, if only they be 
judiciously chosen, will suffice for the attainment of every wise and 
desirable purpose ; that is, in addition to those which he studies for 



LETTERS^ ETC. 169 

specific and professional purposes. It is saying less than the truth to 
affirm, that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally 
good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended 
fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. lYith the due and 
natural intervals, we may recur to it year after year, and it will supply 
the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves 
return with the same healthful appetite. 

" The subjects of the lectures are indeed very different, but not, in 
the strict sense of the term, diverse : they are various rather than 
miscellaneous. There is this bond of connection common to them all, 
that the mental pleasure which they are calculated to excite is not 
dependent on accidents of fashion, place, or age, or the events or 
the customs of the day, but commensurate with the good sense, taste, 
and feeling, to the cultivation of which they themselves so largely 
contribute, as being all in hind, though not all in the same degree, 
productions of Genius. 

" What it would be arrogant to promise, I may yet be permitted to 
hope, — ^that the execution will prove correspondent and adequate to 
the plan. Assuredly, my best efibrts have not been wanting so to 
select and prepare the materials, that, at the conclusion of the lectures, 
an attentive auditor, who should consent to aid his future recollection 
by a few notes, taken either during each lecture or soon after, would 
rarely feel himself, for the time to come, excluded from taking an 
intelligent interest in any general conversation likely to occur in 
mixed society. 

" S. T. COLEIIIDGE." 



LETTER XXVTL 

My dearest Friend, March Ath, 1822. 

I have been much more than ordinarily unwell for more 
than a week past — my sleeps worse than my vigils, my nights 
than my days ; 

'' The night's dismay 

Saddened and stunned the intervening day ;'* 

but last night I had not only a calmer night, Avithout roaming 
in my dreams through any of Swedenborg's HeUs modere ; 
but arose this morning lighter and with a sense of relief. 



170 LETTERS, ETC. 

I scarce know whether the enclosed Detenu is worth enclo- 
sing or reading. I fancy that I send it because I cannot write 
at any length that which is even tolerably adequate to what I 
wish to say. Mrs. Gillman returned from town — ^very much 
pleased with her reception by Mrs. AUsop, and with the 
impression that it would be her husband's fault if she did not 
make him a happy home. 

I shall make you smile, as I did dear Mary Lamb, when I 
say that you sometimes mistake my position. As individual 
to individual, from my childhood, I do not remember feeling 
myself either superior or inferior to any human being ; except 
by an act of my own will in cases of real or imagined moral or 
intellectual superiority. In regard to worldly rank, from eight 
years old to nineteen, I was habituated, nay, naturalised, to 
look up to men circumstanced as you are, as my superiors — a 
large number of our governors, and almost all of those whom 
we regarded as greater men still, and whom we saw most of, 
viz, our committee governors, were such — and as neither awake 
nor asleep have I any other feelings than what I had at 
Christ's Hospital, I distinctly remember that I felt a little 
flush of pride and consequence — just like what we used to feel 
at school when the boys came running to us — " Coleridge ! 
here's your friends want you — they are quite grand^^ or " It 
is quite a lady " — when I first heard who you were, and 
laughed at myself for it with that pleasurable sensation that, 
spite of my sufferings at that school, still accompanies any 
sudden re-awakening of our school-boy feelings and notions. 
And oh, from sixteen to nineteen what hours of Paradise had 
Allen and I in escorting the Miss Evanses home on a Saturday, 
who were then at a milliner s whom we used to think, and 
who I believe really was, such a nice lady ; — and we used to 
carry thither, of a summer morning, the pillage of the flower 
gardens within six miles of town, with Sonnet or Love Ehyme 
wrapped round the nose-gay. To be feminine, kind, and 
genteelly (Avhat I should now call neatly) dressed, these were 



LETTERS, ETC. 171. 

the only things to which my head, heart, or imagination had 
any polarity, and what I was then, I still am. 

God bless you and yours, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



Letter to a Young Lady. 

If there be any one subject which it especially concerns a 
young woman to understand, both in itself generally, and in 
its application to her oyhi particular habits and circumstances, 
IT IS THAT OF MARRIAGE ; and if there be any one subject of 
more perplexing delicacy than any other to advise a young 
woman about, above all for one of a different sex, and of no 
marked inequality in respect of age, however the attempt may 
seem authorised by intimacy and nearness of kindred ; if there 
be one that at once attracts by its importance and repels by its 
difficulty, IT IS THAT OF MARRIAGE. To both scxcs, indeed, 
it is a state of deep and awful interest, and to enter into it 
without proportionate Forethought is in both alike an act of 
Folly and Self- degradation. But in a Woman, if she have 
sense and sensibiKty enough to deserve the name, it is an act 
tantamount to Suicide — for it is a state which, once entered 
into, fills the whole sphere of a Woman's moral and personal 
Being, her Enjoyments and her Duties, dismissing none, 
adding many, and modifying all. Even those Duties (if such 
there be) which it may seem to* leave behind, it does but 
transfer ; say rather, it re-imposes and re-consecrates them 
under yet dearer names (though names more dear than those 
of Daughter and Sister it is not easy to imagine) ; at all 
events, with obligations, additionally binding on her con- 
science, because undertaken by an act of her own free will. A 
woman- — mark me ! in using that term I still have before my 

* Too often, I fear, on the supposed sanction of the mistranslated^ 
and still worse interpreted^ text, Genesis ii. 29. 



172 

mind the idea of Womanliood, and suppose the Individual to 
possess its characteristic constituents — a woman in a single 
state may be happy and may be miserable ; but most happy, 
7no5^ miserable — these are epithets which, with rare exceptions, 
belong exclusively to a Wife. The tree of full life, and 
that " whose mortal taste brings death" into the heart, these, 

my dear , grow in the probationary Eden of courtship 

alone. To the Many of both sexes I am well aware this 
Eden of matrimony is but a Kitchen-garden, a thing of 
Profit and convenience, in an even temperature betw^een 
indifference and liking ; where the beds, bordered with Thrifty 
reject all higher attractions than the homely charms of Mary- 
gold and Penny-royal^ or whatever else ^is good to boil in the 
Pot, or to make the Pot boil ; or if there be aught of richer frag- 
rance and more delicate hues, it is put or suffered there not for 
the Blossom but for the Pod. But this, my dear — — , is neither 
the soil, climate, nor aspect, in which your " Heart' s-ease '^ or 
your " Herbs of grace '^ would bloom or burgeon. To be 
happy in Marriage Life, nay (unless you many with the pros- 
pect of sinking into a lower state of moral feeling, and of 
gTadually quenching in yourself all hope and all aspiration that 
looks beyond animal comforts and the outside shows of worldly 
respectability), in order not to be miserable, you must have a 
^ow?-mate as well as a House or a Fo^e-mate ; you must have 
a Husband whom before the Altar, making yourself at that 
moment distinctly conscious of the presence of the Almighty 
God to whom you appeal, you can safely, that is, according to 
your confident belief, grounded on sufficient opportunities of 
observation, conscientiously vow to love, honour, and respect. 
With what disgust v/ould you not turn from a sordid, wdth w^hat 
horror would you not recoil from a contagious or infectious 
garment offered to you ? you would not suffer it to come near 
your skin. And w^ould you surrender your person, would you 
blend yom* whole personality, as far as God has put it in your 
power to do so, all that you call " I " — soul, body, and estate — 



LETTEES, ETC. 173 

with one, tlie contagion of whose Principles, the infection or 
sordidness of whose habits and conversation you would have 
to guard against in behalf of your own soul ; and the insidious 
influence of which on the tone and spirit of your thoughts, 
feelings, objects, and unconscious tendencies and manners, 
would be as the atmosphere in which you lived ! Or were^the 
Man's character merely negative in these respects, were he 
only incapable of understanding the development of your moral 
Being, including all those minor duties and objects of quiet 
pursuit and enjo^nnent which constitute the moral Taste; 
were he only indifferent to the interest you felt for his and 
your own salvation, and for the conditions of your re-union 
in the world to come — still it would be a henumhing influence, 
and the heart may be starved where it is neither stabbed nor 
poisoned. God said that it was not well for the human Being 
to be alone ; to be what we ought to be, we need support, 
help, communion in good. What, then, if instead of a Help- 
mate we take an Obstacle, a daily counteraction? But the mere 
want of what God has rendered necessary or most desirable 
for us is itself an obstacle. Virtue sickens in the air of the 
Marshes, loaded with poisonous Effluvia ; but even where the 
air is merely deficient in the due quantity of its vital Element, 
and where there is too little, though what there is may be 
faultless, human virtue lives but a panting and anxious life. 
For as to a young woman's marrying in the hope of reforming 
the man's principles, you will join with me in smiling at the 
presumption, or more probably the pretext ; as if the Man was 
likely to appreciate as of very serious importance a danger 
which the Wife had not feared to risk on so slender a chance, 
or be persuaded by her to feel as hateful the very qualities 
which she had taken to her Bosom, as a few weeds in a K^ose- 
gay that she might pick out at leisure. 

Well (you mil perhaps reply), you would have convinced 
me, if I had not been convinced before, of the misery atten- 
dant on an unfit choice, and the criminal folly of a rash and 



174 LETTERS, ETC. 

careless one. But by what marks am I to distinguish the 
suitable from the unsuitable ? What are the criteria, or at 
least the most promising signs of a man likely to prove a good 
husband to a good wife ? And as far as you can judge from 
your knowledge of my character, principles, and temper, likely 
to find his happiness in me, and to make me happy and 
deserving to be so ? For perfection can be expected on neither 
side. 

Most true ; and whilst the Defects are both in their kind and 
their degree within the bounds of that Imperfection which is 
common to all in our present state, the best and wisest way 
that a Wife can adopt, is to regard even faulty trifles as serious 
faults in herself, and yet to bear with the same or equivalent 
faults as trifles in her Husband. If the Fault is removable, 
well and good ; if not, it is a speck in a Diamond — set the 
jewel in the Marriage Eing with the speck downmost. But it 
is one thing to choose for the companion of our life a man 
troubled with occasional Headaches or Indigestions, and another 
to run into the arms of inveterate Gout, or consumption (even 
though the consequent Hectic should render the countenance 
still more winning and beautiful), or of Hemiplegia, that is, 
of Palsy on one side. For, as you will see that I am speaking 
figuratively, and under the names of bodily complaints am 
really thinking, and meaning you to think, of moral and in- 
tellectual Defects and Diseases, I have hazarded the hard word 
^' Hemiplegia ;" as I can conceive no more striking and ap- 
propriate Image or Symbol of an Individual with one-half of 
his Being, that is, his person, manners, and circumstances, 
well and as it should be, while the other and inestimably more 
precious Half is but half alive, blighted and insensate. Now 
for the prevention of the perilous mistake, into which a personal 
prepossession is too apt to seduce the young and marriageable, 
and females more often, perhaps, than males, from the very 
gentleness of their sex, the mistake of looking through the 
diminishing end of the Glass and confounding vices with 



175 

foibles, — I know no better way than by attempting to answer 
the questions, which I have supposed you to put, overleaf; 
viz. — What are the marks, &c., first, generally, and, secondly, 
in particular application to yourself ? In the latter I can of 
course only speak conjecturally, except as your outward cir- 
cumstances and relative Duties are concerning ; in all else you 
must be both Querist and Eespondent. But the former, the 
knowledge of w^hich vfill be no mean assistance to you in solving 
the latter for your own satisfaction, I think I can answer 
distinctly and clearly ; and with this, therefore, we will begin. 

You would have reason to regard your sex affronted, if I 
supposed it necessary to warn any good Woman against open 
viciousness in a Lover, or avowed indifterence to the great 
principles of moral obligation, religious, social, or domestic. 

By " religious'' I do not ^ere mean matters of opinion or 
differences of behef in points where good and wise men have 
agreed to differ. Eeligious (in my present use of the word), is 
but morality in reference to all that is permanent and im- 
perishable^ God and our souls, for instance ; and Morality is 
Eeligion in its application to individuals, circumstances, the 
various relations and spheres in which we happen to be placed ; 
in short, to all that is contingent and transitory, and passes 
away, leaving no abiding trace but the conscience of having or 
not having done our duty in each. 

I would fain, if the experience of Life would permit me, 
think it no less superfluous to dissuade a Woman of common 
foresight and information, from encouraging the addresses of 
one, however unobjectionable or even desirable in all other 
respects, who, she knew, or had good reason to believe, was by 
acquired or hereditary constitution affected by those mournful 
complaints, which, it is well known, are ordinarily transmitted 
to the offspring, to one or more, or all. But, alas ! it often 
happens, that afflictions of this nature are united with the 
highest worth and the most winning attractions of Head, 
Heart, and Person j nay, that they often add to the native 



176 

good Qualities of the Individual a tenderness, a sensibility, 
a quickness of perception, and a vivacity of Principle, that 
cannot but conciliate an interest in behalf of the Possessor in 
the affections of a Woman, strong in proportion to the degree 
in which she is herself characterised by the same excellences. 
Manly virtues and manly sense with feminine manners mthout 
effeminacy, form such an assemblage, a tout ensemble so 
delightful to the Womanly Heart, that it demands a hard, a 
cruel struggle to find in any ground of objection an effective 
counterpoise, a decisive negative. Yet the struggle must be 
made, and must end in the decisive and, if possible, the pre- 
ventive " NO ;" or all claims to Eeason and Conscience, and to 
that distinctive seal and impress of divinity on Womanhood, 
the Maternal Soul, must be abandoned. The probable misfor- 
tunes attendant on the early death of the Head of the Family 
are the least fearful of the consequences that may rationally, 
and therefore oiight^ morally, to be expected from such a choice. 
The Mother's anguish, the Father'' s heart-wasting self-reproach, 
the recollection of that Innocent lost, the sight of this Darling 
suffering, the Dread of the future, — in fine, the conversion of 
Heaven's choicest Blessings into sources of anguish and subjects 
of Eemorse. I have seen all this in more than one miserable, 
and most miserable because amiable and affectionate couple, 
and have seen that the sound constitution of one parent has 
not availed against the Taint on the other. Would to God 
the picture I have here exhibited were as imaginary in itself 
as its exhibition is unnecessary and the reality of improbable 
occurrence for you. 

Dismissing, therefore, as taken for granted or altogether 
inapplicable, all objections grounded on gross and palpable unfit- 
ness for a state of moral and personal union and life-long 
interdependence, — and less than this is not Marriage, whether 
the unfitness result from constitutional or from moral defect or 
derangement ; and with these, and only not quite so bad, dis- 
missing too the objections from want of competence, on both 



LETTERS, ETC. 177 

sides, in worldly means, proportional to their former rank and 
habits ; and yet what worse or more degradingly selfish (yea, 
the very Dregs and Sediment of Selfishness, after the more 
refined and human Portion of it, the sense of sel^-interest, has 
been drawn off), what worse, I repeat, can be said of the Beasts 
of the Field, without reflection, without forethought, of whom 
and for whose Offspring, Nature has taken the responsibility 
upon herself? — Putting all these aside, as too obvious to 
require argument or exposition, I will now^ pass to those 
marks which too frequently are overlooked, however obvious 
in themselves they may be ; but which ought to be looked for, 
and looked after^ by every woman who has ever reflected on 
the words, ^^ my future Husband ^' with more than girlish 
Feelings and Fancies. And if the Absence of these Marks in 
an ludividiUdl furnishes a decisive reason for the rejection of 
his addresses, there are others the presence of which forms a 
sufficient 'ground for hesitation, and I will begin wdth an 
instance. 

When you hear a Man making exceptions to any funda- 
mental Law of Duty in favour of some particular pursuit or 
passion, and considering the dictates of Honour as neither 
more nor less than motives of selfish Prudence in respect of 
character ; in other words, as conventional and ever-changing 
regulations, the breach of which will, if detected, hlacklall the 
offender, and send him to Coventry in that particular Rank and 
Class of Society of which he was born or has become a 
member ; when, instead of giving instantaneous and uncon- 
ditional obedience to the original Voice from within, a man 
substitutes for this, and listens after, the mere echo of the 
Voice from without ; his knowledge, I mean, of what is com- 
manded by Fashion and enforced by the foreseen consequences 
of non-compliance on his Worldly reputation (thus I myself 
heard a buckish Clergyman, a clerical jSTimrod, at Salisbury 
avow, that he would cheat his own Father in a Horse), then I 
say, that to smile, or show yourselves smiling angry, as if a 

12 



178 LETTERS, ETC. 

Tap with your Fan was a sufficient punishment, and a " for 
shame ! you don't think so, I am sure,'^ or " you should not 
say so,'' a sufficient reproof, would be an ominous symptom 
either of your own laxity of moral Principle and deadness to 
true honour, and the unspeakable Contemptibleness of this 
gentlemanly Counterfeit of it, or of your abandonment to a 
blind passion, kindled by superficial Advantages and outside 
Agreeables, and blow^n and fuelled by that most base and yet 
frequent thought, '^ one must not be over nice, or a worn. an may 
say No till no one asks her to say Yes." And what does this 
amount to (with all the other pretty conmion places, as, " What 
right have / to expect an angel in the shape of a man ?" i&c, 
&c.) but the plain confession, " I want to be married, the better 
the man the luckier for me ; I have made up my mind to be 
the Mistress of a Family ; in short, I want to be married ! " 

Under this head you may safely place all the knowing Prin- 
ciples of action, so often and so boastingly confessed by your 
clever fellows — " I take care of Number One ; hey, Neighbour: 
what say you ?" — " Each for himself, and God for us all: that's 
my maxim." And likewise, as the very same essentially, 
though in a more dignified and seemly Form, the principle of 
determining whether a thing is right or wrong, by its supposed 
Consequences. 

There are men who let their life pass aw^ay without a single 
effort to do good, either to Friend or Neighbour, to their 
country or their religion, on the strength of the question — 
" What good will it do ?" But woe to the man who is inca- 
pable of feeling, that the greatest possible good he can do for 
himself or for others, is to do his duty and to leave the conse- 
quences to God. But it w^ill be answ^ered, " How can we 
ascertain that it is our duty but by weighing the probable 
consequences f Besides, no one can act without Motives ; and 
all motives must at last have respect to the agent's own self- 
interest ; and that is the reason why Religion is so useful^ 
"because it carries on our Self-interest beyond the graved 



179 

mj dear ! so many wortliy persons, who 

really, though unconscious^", both act from, and are actuated 
by, far nobler impulses, are educated to talk in this language, 
that I dare not expose the folly, turpitude, immorality, and 
irreligion of this system, without premising the necessity of 
trying to discover, previous to your forming a fixed opinion 
respecting the true character of the Individuals from whom 
you may have heard declarations of this kind, whether the sen- 
timents proceed from the Tongue only, or at worst, from a 
misinstructed Understanding, or are the native growth of his 
beart/^ 

* « 4& * * 

S. T. C. 



The following verses were pointed out to me by my friend 
about this time. They are worthy of the age to which they 
belong. 

I. 

And what is love, I praie thee tell ? 

It is that fountain and that well 

Where pleasure and repentance dwell ; 

It is, perhaps, that passing bell 

Which tolls all into heaven or hell : 

And this is love, as I heare tell. 

n. 

Yet what is love, I praie thee say ? 
It is a work — a hohday, 
It is December matched with May ; 
When lusty Blood's in fresh arraie 
Heare ten months after of the plaie, 
And this is love, as I heare sale. 



It is a game where none doth gaine ; 
The lasse saithe no, and would full faine; 
And this is love, as I heare saine. 



J 80 LETTERS, ETC. 

IV. 
Yet what is love, I pray thee say ? 
It is a yea, it is a nay, 
A pretie kind of sporting fray ; 
It is a thing will soon away, 
Then take advantage while you may ; 
And this is love, as I heare say. 

V. 

Yet what is love, I pray thee shoe ? 
A thing that creeps, it cannot goe, 
A prize, that passeth to and fro ; 
A thing for one, a thing for two, 
And they that prove must find it so ; 
And this is love (sweet friend) I tro. 



LETTER XXVIIL 

My dear F^iend^ March 22nd, 1822, 

Mr. Watson Is but now returned. I was about to set off 
to yonr house and take turns with Mrs. AUsop in watching you. 
It is a comfort to hear from Watson that he thinks you look 
not only better than when he saw you before, but more 
promisingly. 

Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi fiant 

Hsec tria : mens hilaris, requies, moderata dieta. 

is the adage of the old Schola Salernitana, and his belief and 
judgment. Would to God that there were any druggist or 
apothecary within the king^s dominions where I could procure 
for you the first ingredient of the recipe, fresh and genuine. I 
would soon make up the prescription, have the credit of curing 
you, and then make my fortune by advertising the nostrum 
under the name of Dr. Samsartorius, Carbonifugiiis's Panacea 

Sa lernitana iensis. 

You will have thought, I fear, that I had forgotten my 
promise of sending you Charles Lamb's epistola porcince. 
But it was not so. I now enclose it, and when you return it 



LETTERS, ETC. 181 

I Will make a copy for you if you wisli it, for I think that 
writing in your present state will be most injurious to you. 

I am interrupted — " a poor lad, very ragged, he says Mr. 
Dowling has sent him to you to show you his pcetry." — 
" Well ! desire him to step up, Maria !'' 

As soon as Mr. Green left me, Mrs. Gillman delivered 
your letter. I am not sorry, therefore, that the *^ Wild Irish 
Boy" made it too late to finish the above for that day's post. 
His name, poor lad! is Esmond Wilton; his mother, I guess, 
w^as poetical. But I T\ill reserve him for a dish on our table 
of chat when we meet. — In reply to your affectionate letter 
what can I say, but that from all that you say, wi-ite or do, I 
receive but two impressions ; first, a full, cordial, and unquali- 
fied assm^ance of your love towards me, a genial, unclouded 
faith in the entireness and steadfastness of yom* more than 
friendship, sustained and renewed by the consciousness of a 
responsive attachment in myself, that blends the affections of 
parent, brother and friend, — 

*' A love of thee tliat seems, yet cannot greater be ;" 

and secondly, impressions of grief or joy, according, and in 
proportion to, the information I receive, or the inferences that 
I draw, respecting yom- health, ease of heart and mind, and all 
the events, incidents, and circumstances, that affect, or are 
Cxalculated to affect, both or either. Only this in addition — 
whatever else may pass through yom- mind, never, from any 
motive, or with any view, t\ ithhold from me your thoughts, 
your feelings, and your sorrows. What if they be momentary, 
winged thoughts, not native, that blowing weather has driven 
out of their com^se, and to which your mind has allowed 
thorough flight, but neither nest, perch, nor halting room ? 
Send them onward to pass through mine ; and between us both, 
we shaU be better able to give a good account of them ! What 
if they are the offspring of low or perturbed spirits — the 
changelings of iU health or disquietude ? So much the rather 



182 

communicate them. When on the white paper, they are 
already out of us ; and when the letter is gone, they wiU not 
stay long behind ; the very anticipation of the answer will have 
answered them, and superseded the need, though not the wish, 
of its arrival. And shall I not, think you, take them for 
what they are? With what comfort, with what security, 
could I receive or read your letters, or you mine, if w^e either 
of us had reason to believe, that whatever affliction had befallen, 
or discomfort was harassing, or anxiety was weighing on the 
heart, the other would say no word of or about it, under the 
plea of not transplanting thorns, or whatever other excuse a 
depressed fancy might invent, in order to transmute unfriendly/ 
withholding into a. self-sacrifice of tenderness. If you had 
come to stay with me while I lay on a bed of pain, it would 
grieve you indeed, if, from an imagined duty of not grieving 
you, 1 shoidd suppress every expression of suffering, and not 
tell you where my pain was, or whether it was greater or less. 
Grant that I was rendered anxious or heavy at heart, or keenly 
sorrowful^ by any tidings you had communicated respecting 
yourself ! Should it not be so ? Ought it not to be so ? Will 
not the Joy be greater when the Cloud is passed off — greater 
in Mndj nobler, better — because I should feel it was my right f 
And is there not a dignity and a hidden Healing in the suffering 
itself — which is soothed in the wish and tempered in the 
endeavour of removing, or lessening, or supporting it, in the 
Soul of a dear Friend ? However trifling my vexations are, 
yet if they vex me, and I am writing to you, to you I will 

unbosom them, my dear and my serious sorrows and 

hindrances I wiU still less keep back from you. General 
Truths, Discussions, Poems, Queries — all these are parts of 
my nature, often uppermost ; and when they are so, you have 
them — and I like well to write to, and to hear from you on 
them — but these I might write to the Public : and, with all 
Christian respect for that gentleman, I love your little finger 
better than his whole multitudinous Body, 



LETTERS, ETC. 183 

Give my love to Mrs. Allsop, and tell her I will try to 
deserve hers. 

Ever and ever God bless you, my dearest friend. 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



The letter here alluded to is a most delightful communica- 
tion from Charles Lamb ; which, with the hints thrown out by 
Manning, as to the probable origin of roast meat, were after- 
wards interwoven into that paper on Eoast Pig, one of the 
most, if not the most, delightful Essay in our Language. 

A collection of Lamb's very curious letters — more especially 
those written during the last twenty years — would be inva- 
luable. Indeed, if I judge aright from the numberless Letter- 
lets in my possession, and from those longer letters now I fear 
lost, a selection, if made from various sources, would be one of 
the most interesting in our Literature. 

''Dear C, 

" It gives me great satisfaction to hear that the Pig turned out 
so well— they are interesting creatures at a certain age. What a pity 
such buds should blow out into the maturity of rank bacon ! You had 
all some of the crackling — and brain sauce — did you remember to rub 
it with butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis ? 
Did the eyes come away kindly with no CEdipean avulsion ? — was the 
crackling the colour of the ripe pomegranate ? — had you no damned 
complement of boiled neck of mutton before it to blunt the edge of 
delicate desire? — did you flesh maiden teeth in it? 

*' Not that I sent the Pig, or can form the remotest guess what part 
Owen (our landlord) could play in the business. I never knew him 
give any thing away in his life — he would not begin with strangers. 
I suspect the Pig after all was meant for me — but at the unlucky 
juncture of time being absent, the present, somehow, went round to 
Highgate. 

" To confess an honest truth, a Pig is one of those things I could 
never think of sending away. Teals, widgeons, snipes, barn-door 
fowls, ducks, geese, your tame villatic things — Welsh mutton — collars 
of brawn— sturgeon, fresh and pickled — your potted char — Swiss 
cheeses — French pies — early grapes — muscadines, — I impart as freely 
to my friends as to myself, — they are but seZ/'-extended ; but pardon 



184 LETTERS, ETC. 

me if I stop somewhere — tcJiere the fine feeling of "benevolence givetJi a 
higher smack than the sensual rarity ; there my friends (or any good 
man) may command me; but pigs are pigs ; and I myself am therein 
nearest to myself; nay, I should think it an affront, an undervaluing 
done to Nature, who bestowed such a boon upon me, if, in a churlish 
mood, I parted with the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs I 
ever felt of remorse was when a child — my kind old aunt had strained 
her pocket-strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me . 
In my way home through the Borough, I met a venerable old man — 
not a mendicant — but thereabouts; a looh-ieggar — not a verbal 
petitionist — and, in the coxcombry of taught charity, I gave away 
the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an evangelical 
peacocJc, when of a sudden my old aunt's kindness crossed me— the 
sum it was to her— the pleasure that she had a right to expect that /, not 
the old impostor, should talce in eating her caJce— the damned ingratitude 
by which, under the colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her 
cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart so grievously^ 
that I think I never suffered the like. And I was right ; it was a 
piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. 
The cake has long been masticated, consigned to the dunghill, with 
the ashes of that unseasonable pauper. 

" But when Providence, who is better to us all than our aunts, 
gives me a Pig, remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall 
endeavour to act towards it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose, 

" Yours (short of Pig) to command in everything, 

" C. L.^ 



" When I first heard from Stewart of the Courier that 
Buonaparte had declared that the interests of small states must 
always succumb to great ones, I said, * Thank God ! he has 
sealed his fate : from this moment his fall is certain.' '' 



'' Clarkson (the moral steam engine, or Giant with one 
idea) had recently published his book, and being in a very- 
irritable state of mind, his wife expressed great fears of the 
effect of any severe review in the then state of his feelings. I 
wrote to Jeffrey, and expressed to him my opinion of the 
cruelty of any censure being passed upon the work as a com- 
position. In return I had a very polite letter, expressing a 



LETTERS, ETC. 185 

msh that I sliould review it. I did so : but wlien tlie Review 
was published, in the place of some just eulogiums due to 
Mr. Pitt, and which I stated were upon the best authority (in 
fact, they were fi^om Tom Clarkson himself), was substituted 
some abuse and detraction.* Yet Clarkson expressed himself 
gratified and satisfied with the eiBfect of the review, and w^ould 
not allow me to expose the transaction. Again, Jeffrey had 
said to me that it was hopeless to persuade men to prefer 
Hooker and Jeremy Taylor to Johnson and Gribbon. I wrote 
him two letters, or two sheets, detailing, at great leng-th, my 
opinions. This he never acknowledged ; but in an early num- 
ber of the Review he inserted the whole of my communication 
in an article of the Review, and added at the conclusion words 
to this effect : ^ We have been anxious to be clear on this sub- 
ject, as much has been said on this matter by men who 
evidently do not understand it. Such are Wordsworth, 
Southey, Coleridge, and Miss Baillie.^ " 



" One day, when I had not a shilling which I could spare, 
I was passing by a cottage not far from Kesmck, where a 
carter was demanding a shilling for a letter, which the woman 
of the house appeared unwilling to pay, and at last declined to 
take. I paid the postage ; and when the man was out of sight, 
she told me that the letter was from her son, who took that means 
of letting her know that he was well : the letter was not to ie 
paid for. It was then opened, and found to be blank ! " 



" On my return I found a double letter, for which two shil- 
lings had been paid. I tore it open, and found it to contain a 
long communication from Haydon the Artist, which, in allusion 
to my Poem on Mont Blanc, ended thus : ' From this moment 
you are immortal.' I was ungrateful enough to consider 
Mr. Haydon's immortality dear at two shillings ! And though 

* Was not this a fraud, a moral forgery ? And tliis man, who 
attained notoriety and influence by conduct and practices like these, 
is he not a Judge, whose office it is to punish such acts in another ? 



186 



ETC. 



I can now smile at the infliction, my judgment remains the 
same ; and to this day my thanks have not been given to 
Mr. Hay don for his apotheosis/' 



" Darwin was so egregiously vain, that, after having given 
to his son a thesis upon Ocular Spectra, in itself an entire 
plagiarism from a German book published at Leipsig, he 
became jealous of the praise it received, and caused it to be 
given out that he was the real author. Nay, he even T\Tote 
letters and verses to himself, which he affixed to his own Poems 
as being addressed to him, by (I think) Billsborough, a young 
admirer of his. He asked his friends w^hether they had not 
frequently heard him express opinions like these twenty years 
ago?'' 



LETTEE XXIX. 

My dearest Friend, April IHth 1822. 

There was neither self nor unself in the flash or jet of 



pleasurable sensation with which I saw the old 



J T P j 
PALL MALL 
3 



tea canister top surmounting my own name, but a mere unre- 
flecting gladness, a sally of inward welcoming, on finding you 
near to me again. I am indebted to it, however, for this, and 
the dear and affectionate letter that sustained and substantiated 
it, like a gleam of sunshine ushering in a genial south-west, 
and setting all the birds a singing ; while the joy at the recall 
of the old, dry, scathy^ viceroy of the discouraged spring, the 
Tartar laird from the north-east, augments yet loses itself in 
the delight at the arrival of the long wished-for successor to 
his native realm, gave a sudden spur and kindly sting to my 
spirits, the restorative effects of which I felt on rising this 
morning, as soon after, at least, as the pain which always 



LETTERS, ETC. 187 

gi'eets me on awaking, and never fails to be my Valentine for 
every day in the year, had taken its leave. 

Charles and Mary Lamb are to dine with us on Smiday 
next, and I hope it \Yill be both pleasant and possible for you 
and Mrs. Allsop to complete the party ; and if so, I will take 
care to be quite free to enjoy your society from the moment 
of your an'ival, and I hope that Mrs. Allsop will not be too 
much tired for me to show her some of oiu' best views and 
walks ; and perhaps the nightingales may commence their 
ditties on or by that day, for I have daily expected them, 

Need I say what thoughts inish into my mind when I read 
a letter from you, or think of yom- love towards me. 

God bless you, my dear, dear friend, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



The following observations preface a chronological and his- 
toric assistant to a coui^se of lectm^es, delivered in 1818. 

" The history of philosophy commences Tvith the birth of Thales. 
Of the three different dates given by three several chronolo gists — 
namely, 640, 629, and o94th, year before Christ — I have chosen the 
second, not only as a mean, but as best agreeing with his manhood 
being contemporary with Solon's, and with the recorded fact of his 
having foretold an eclipse of the snn in the fourth year of the 45th 
Olympiad, or 597 B.C. : thus making an interval of 322 years between 
the birth of Thales and the era in which Hesiod and Homer are gene- 
rally supposed to have flourished ; that is, about the year B.C. 907. In 
the great poems of this era we find a language already formed, beyond 
all example adapted to social intercourse, to description, narration, 
and the expression of the passions. It possesses pre-eminently the per- 
fections which our Milton demands of the language of poetry. It is 
simple, sensuous and impassioned. And, if in the word ' sensuous ' 
we include, as Milton doubtless intended that we should, the gratifica- 
tion of the sense of hearing as well as that of sight, sweetness as well 
as beauty, these few pregnant words will be found a full and discri- 
mmative character of the Greek language, as it appears in the Iliad 
and Odyssey ; and expressing with no less felicity the desideratum or 
ideal of poetic diction in all languages. But our admiration must not 
seduce us to extend its perfections beyond the objective into the sub- 



188 LETTERS, ETC. 

jective 'ends of language. It is the language of poetry, not of specu- 
lation ; an exponent of the senses and sensations, not of reflection, 
abstraction, generalisation, or the mind's own notice of its own acts. 
It was, in short, what the state of society was — the best and loveliest 
of its kind, but of an imperfect kind ; an heroic youth, but still a youth, 
and with the deficiencies and immaturity of youth. 

^' In all countries, the language of intellect has been posterior to, 
and the consequence of, settled law and an established religion. 
But in the Homeric times laws appear to have been extemporaneous, 
made for the occasion by tumultuary assemblage, with or without 
the consent of their king, whose sovereignty (or effective power) 
depended chiefly on his superior wealth,* though the royal title 
resulted from birth and ancestry, as is always the case in countries 
the aborigines of which have been conquered by new settlers who 
regarding themselves, of course, as a superior race, constitute and 
leave an order of nobility. 

*' Concerning the state of religion, it would be as difHcult, as for the 
purpose in hand it is unnecessary, to speak otherwise than negatively. 
It is sufiicient to see, that it neither had nor could have any bearing 
on philosophy ; inasmuch as all the problems, which it is the peculiar 

* Thus Ulysses (Od. 1. xi.) tells Alcinous that kings must be rich, 
if they would be respected by their people, and the larger the estate 
the more the obedience. And of himself we are told (1. xiv.) — 

Ulysses his estate and wealth were such^ 
No prince in Greece, nor Argos, nor Epire, 
In Ithica no twenty, had so much : 
And, if to have it reckoned you desire, 
Upon the continent twelve herds of kine, 
Twelve herds of goats, as many flocks of sheep, 
As many swine-houses replete with swine ; 
And here, upon the island's farthest end, 
There be eleven herds of goats. 

Hohhes^ Odyssey; 

which, homely as it is throughout and too often vulgar, scarcely falls 
below the point more than the other translators strain above it. In 
easy flow of narration Hobbes has few rivals; and his metre in 
alternate rhyme is so smooth (negatively smooth, I mean), so lithe, 
without bone or muscle, that you soon forget that it is metre, and 
read on with the same kind and degree of interest as if it were a 
volume of the " Arabian Nights." 



189 

object of philosophy to solve, the Hesiodic theology, or rather 
theogony, precludes, by resolving the absolute origin and ground of 
all things into night and chaos. The gods differed from animals only 
by a right of primogeniture. Will, Intelligence, and Love, are an 
equivocal generation of Death, Darkness, and Passive Necessity. 
The scheme, therefore, as delivered by Hesiod, is an anti-philosophic 
Atheism, of which a sensual Polytheism was but the painted veil. 

*' During the long interval from Homer to Solon all the necessary 
conditions and antecedents of Philosophy had been gradually evolved ; 
the governments had ripened into constitutions ; legislation had 
become a science, in which the disposition of the parts was predeter- 
mined by some one predominant object, to which they were to be all 
alike subservient and instrumental. Thus, in Spaita, the country as 
the efficient object self of each citizen ; self-sufficing fortitude in the 
individuals, and self-sufficing strength in the state ; and, as the means 
to those ends, war and the exclusion of trade : in Athens, political equi- 
librium by the balance of artificial and physical force, so as to pr event- 
re volution and faction, without checking progressiveness and public 
spirit. In this manner, the minds of men were accustomed to 
principles, and ideal ends : and the faculties, more especially intellectual 
— Abstraction, Comparison, and Generalisation, the contemplation of 
unity in the balance of differences and the resolution of differences into 
unity by the establishment of a common object ; all the powers, in short, 
by which the mind is raised from the things to the relations of things, — 
were called forth and exercised. In the meantime, the Phoenicians and 
Egyptians were successively the masters of the Mediterranean : and 
to the former, and their close connection with Palestine, it is more 
than merely probable, we must ascribe the institution of the Cabiric 
Mysteries* in Samothrace, for the influence of which, as the foster- 
mother of Philosophy, we refer to our first lecture. We have only to 
add the appearance of individuality in conception and style, as mani- 
fested in the rise of the Lyric Poets, Thales, the immediate prede- 
cessors or contemporaries, the connection of which with the awakening 
of the speculative impulse, will be likewise shown, in the first lectiire, 
to explain and justify our choice in the point from which we have 
made the Chronology of Philosophy commence, and conducted it to 
the final extinction of Philosophy (or, at least, its long trance of 

* " That Orpheus and Jason were initiated, or that Ulysses was 
the founder, must be regarded as mere poetic fictions, contradictory in 
themselves and inconsistent with the earliest genuine poems of 
Greece." 



190 LETTERS, ETC. 

suspended animation) in the reign of Justinian. The chronology of 
its resuscitation, with the requisite historical illustrations, includes a 
far larger number of names and events than could be contained within 
the prescribed limits ; and, in addition to this, it would belong rather 
to the claims of individuals than to the rise, progress, and (as it were) 
completed cycle of philosophy itself, which will occupy the first and 
larger division of the course. Should such a work, however, be 
desired, it will more profitably appear at the conclusion, so formed as 
to assist in the recollection of the several lectures." 



" Vivid impressions are too frequently mistaken by the young 
and ardent, for clear conceptions.'^ 



" The argument that the mind is a result of the body, sup- 
ported by the apparent coincidence of their growth and decay, 
is a non sequitur. The mind, when acquired or possessed 
(though subject to progression and retrogression) can never be 
lost or enfeebled by old age or bodily debility. It is the decay 
of the hodily powers Y^hioh. enervates or enfeebles the will, by 
refusing to obey its promptings.' ' 



" Teachers of youth are, by a necessity of their present 
condition, either unsound or uncongenial. If they possess that 
buoyancy of spirit, which best fits them for communicating to 
those under their charge, the knowledge it is held useful for 
them to acquire, they are deemed imsound. If they possess 
a subdued sobriety of disposition, the result of a process com- 
pared to which the course of a horse in a mill is positive 
enjoyment, they of necessity hecome ungenial. Is this a fitting 
condition, a meet and just return for the class. Instructors ? 
And yet have I not truly described them ? Has any one 
known a teacher of youth who, having attained any repute as 
such, has also retained any place in society as an individual ? 
Are not all such men ^ Dominie Sampsons ' in what relates to 
their duties, interests, and feelings as citizens ; and, with 



LETTERS, ETC. 191 

respect to females, do they not all possess a sort of mental 
odoiu' ? Are not all masters, all those who are held in estima- 
tion, not scholars, but always masters, even in their spons ; and 
are not the female teachers always teaching and setting right f 
whilst both not only lose the freshness of youth, both of mind 
and body, but seem as though they never had been young. 
They who have to teach, can never afford to learn ; hence 
their improgTCSsion, 

To the above remarks, true as they are in themselves, I am 
desirous to draw yom- paiticular attention. Those who have 
to teach, a duty which if ably discharged is the highest and 
most important which society imposes, are placed in a position 
in which they necessarily acquire a general or generic character, 
and this, for the most paii:, unfits them for mixing in society 
with ease to themselves or to others. Is this just, is it for the 
advantage of the community that those to whom the highest 
and most responsible trusts are confided, should be rendered 
unfit to associate with their fellow men, by something which 
is imposed upon them, or which they are made to acquire, as 
teachers ? Does not Society owe it to this meritorious class, to 
examine into the causes of these peculiarities with a view to 
remove ascertained evils, or by developing them to bring 
constantly before our eyes the necessity, in their case^ of results 
which at present have such evil influences upon the more 
genial feelings of so large, and eveiy way estimable and 
intelligent, a portion of our fellow men. It is requisite that 
the conviction now become so self-evident, ^' that vice is the 
effect of error and the offspring of smTounding circumstances, 
the object of condolence and not of anger," should become a 
habit of the mind in the daily and hourly occm-rences of social 
life. This consummation, so devoutly to be wished, is now 
for the first time possible ; and, when it shall be fully realised, 
will lead most assm^edly to the amelioration of the human 
race, and whatever has life or is capable of improvement. 



192 LETTERS, ETC. 

LETTER XXX. 

My very dear Friend, May SOtk, 1822. 

On my arrival at Highgate after our last parting, I ought 
to have written, if it were only that I had fully resolved to do 
so, and when I feel that I have not done what I ought, and what 
you would done in my place, I will, as indeed too safely to 
make a merit of it I may do, leave the palliative and extenua- 
ting circumstance to your kindness to think of. This only let 

me say, that mournful as my experience of Messrs. 

and * in my own immediate concerns had been, of the 

latter especially, I was not prepared for their late behaviour, 
or, to use Anster's words on the occasion, for " so piteous a 
lowering of human nature," as the contents of Mr. W.'s letters 
were calculated to produce. 

I have at length — for I really tore it out of my brain, as it 
were piecemeal, a bit one day and a bit the day after — finished 
and sent off a letter of two folio large and close-written sheets 
— nine sides equal to twelve of this size paper — to Mr. Dawes, 
of Ambleside, the rough copy of which I will show you when 
we meet. 

The exceeding kindness and uncalculating instantaneous 
and decisive generous Friendship of the Gillmans, and the 
presence of you to my Thoughts, prevent all approach to 
misanthropy in my Feelings, but for that reason render those 
feelings more acutely painful. If I did not know that Genius, 
like Eeason, though not perhaps so entirely, is rather a presence 
vouchsafed, like a guardian spirit, to an Individual, which 
departs whenever the Evil Self becomes decisively predominant, 
and not like Talents or the Powers of the Understanding, a 

personal property — the contemplation of 's late and 

present state of Head and Heart would overwhelm me. But 

* Great as was the shock my friend sustained from the unkind 
conduct of the gentlemen here alluded to, it is to me a great solace 
to be assured that he forgave them fully and entirely. 



193 

I must not represent my neglect as worse tlian I myself hold It 
to be ; for I feel that I could not have omitted it had I not 
known that you were so busily engaged. 

Charles and Mary Lamb and Mr. Green dine with us on 
Sunday next, w^hen we are to see Mathews' Picture GaUery. 
Can you and Mrs. Allsop join the party ? or, if Mrs. AUsop's 
health should make this hazardous or too great an exertion, 
can you come yom^self ? I am sm^e she will forgive me for 
putting the question. 

God bless you and your affectionate 

S. T, Coleridge. 

" The most extraordinary and the best attested instance of 
enthusiasm existing in conjunction with perseverance is related 
of the founder of the Foley family. This man, who was a 
fiddler living near Stourbridge, was often witness of the 
immense labour and loss of time, caused by dividing the rods 
of iron, necessary in the process of making nails. The dis- 
covery of the process caUed splitting, in works called splitting 
mills, was first made in Sweden, and the consequences of this 
advance in art were most disastrous to the manufacturers of 
iron about Stourbridge. Foley the fiddler was shortly missed 
fi^om his accustomed rounds, and was not again seen for many 
years. He had mentally resolved to ascertain by what means 
the process of splitting of bars of iron w^as accomplished ; and, 
without communicating his intention to a single human being, 
he proceeded to Hull, and thence, without funds, worked his 
passage to the Swedish iron port. Arrived in Sweden, he 
begged and fiddled his way to the iron foundries, where, after 
a time, he became a universal favourite with the workmen ; 
and, from the apparent entire absence of intelligence or any- 
thing like ultimate object, he was received into the works, to 
every part of which he had access. He took the advantage 
thus offered, and having stored his memory with observations 
and all the combinations, he disappeared from amongst his 

13 



194 LETTERS, ETC. 

kind friends as lie had appeared, no one knew whence or 
whither. 

On his return to England he communicated his voyage and 
its results to Mr. Knight and another person in the neighbour- 
hood, with whom he was associated, and by whom the necessary 
buildings were erected and machinery provided. — When at 
length every thing was prepared, it was found that the 
machinery would not act, at all events it did not answer the 
sole end of its erection — it w^ould not split the bar of iron. 

Foley disappeared again, and it was concluded that shame 
and mortification at his failure had driven him away for ever. 
Not so : again, though somewhat more speedily, he found his 
way to the Swedish iron works, where he was received most 
joyfully, and to make sure of their fiddler, he was lodged in the 
splitting mill itself. Here was the very aim and end of his 
life attained beyond his utmost hope. He examined the works 
and very soon discovered the cause of his failure. He now 
made drawings or rude tracings, and, having abided an ample 
time to verify his observations and to impress them clearly 
and vividly on his mind, he made his way to the port, and once 
more returned to England. This time he was completely 
successful, and by the results of his experience enriched himself 
and greatly benefited his countrymen. This I hold to be the 
most extraordinary instance of credible devotion in modern 
times." 



^' Phillips left Nottingham, where he had first established 
himself, at an early age. He afterwards kept a hosiery shop 
in St. Paul's, and sold the Magazine at the back. He used to 
boast that he could do more by puffing than all the other 
booksellers. It is certain that he was a great annoyance to 
them at one time. He had a host of writers in his pay, whom 
however, he never retained. A gross flatterer. I recollect 
hearing him address some fulsome compliments to Dr. Beddoes, 
to which the Doctor appeared to listen with patience. He was, 



195 

after a peroration of ten minutes^ duration, told, by the Doctor 
that he was wrong in his chronology, 

"^ Not right in my chronology !'^ said the surprised book- 
seller ; '' what has chronology to do with the matter ? " 

" ^ Only this : that so far back as the year 1540, this kind 
of complimentary insult had become obsolete/ 

^' The Knight said no more, but decamped at once. 

'^ Once, when in an abstruse argument with Mrs. Barbaiild 
on the Berkleian controversy, she exclaimed, — ^Mr. Coleridge ! 
Mr. Coleridge ! ' 

" The Knight was present. No sooner did he hear my 
name mentioned than he came up to my chair, and after making 
several obsequious obeisances, expressed his regret that he 
should have been half-an-hom^ in the company of so great a 
man without being aware of his good fortune, adding shortly 
afterwards, ^ I would have given nine guineas a sheet for his 
conversation dm-ing the last hour and half?' This too at a 
time when I had not been at all publicly known more than a 
month. 

" He avowed, indeed, afterwards, that he never feared offend- 
ing by flattery, being convinced that for one man who was 
offended ninety-nine were pleased with that, which, if presented 
to others, they would have deemed nauseating and dis- 
gusting. '' 



LETTEE XXXI. 

My dear Friend, June 2dtk, 1822. 

As fervent a prayer, as glow-trembling a joy, thanksgiving 
that seeks to steady itself by prayer, and prayer that dissolves 
itself into thanks and gladness, as ever eddied in or streamed 
onward from of love and friendship for pain and dread, for 
travail of body and spirit passed over, and a mother smiKng 
over the first-born at her bosom, have sped toward you from 



196 LETTERS, ETC. 

the moment I opened your Letter. For as if there had been 
a light suffused along the paper at that part, " birth of a 
Daughter after a very short illness,'' were the first words I 
saw. " Well pleased! " To be sure you are. It was scarcely 
a week ago that — during the only hour free from visits, visitors, 
and visitations that we have had to ourselves for I do not 
know how long — Mrs. Gillman and I had settled the point ; 
and, after a strict, patient, and impartial poll of the pro's and 
corCs on both sides, a Girl it was to be, and a Girl was returned 
by a very large majority of wishes. But as wishes^ like straw- 
berries, do not bear carriage well, or at least require to be 
poised on the head^ I will send a scanty specimen of the 
Eeasons by way of Hansel. Imprimis^ A Girl takes five times 
as much spoiling to spoil her. Item. — It is a great advantage 
both in respect of Temper, Manners, and the Quickening of the 
Faculties, for a Boy to have a Sister or Sisters a year or two 
older than himself. — But I devote this brief scroll to Feeling : 
so no more of disquisition, except it be to declare the entire 
coincidence of my experience with yours as to the very rare 
occurrence of strong and deep Feeling in conjunction with free 
power and vivacity in the expression of it. The most eminent 
Tragedians, Garrick for instance, are known to have had their 
emotions as much at command, and almost as much on the 
surface, as the muscles of their countenances ; and the French, 
who are aU Actors, are proverbially heartless. Is it that it is 
a false and feverous state for the Centre to live in the Circum- 
ference ? The vital warmth seldom rises to the surface in the 
form of sensible Heat, without becoming hectic and inimical to 
the Life within, the only source of real sensibility. Eloquence 
itself — I speak of it as habitual and at call — too often is, and 
is always like to engender, a species of histrionism. 

In one of my juvenile pc ems (on a Friend who died in a 
Frenzy Fever), you will find* that I was jealous of this in 

* To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned 
Energic Eeason and a shaping mind, 



LETTERS, ETC. 1&7 

myself; and that it is (as I trust it is), otherwise^ I attribute 
mainly to tlie following causes : — A naturally, at once searching 
and communicative disposition, the necessity of reconciling the 
restlessness of an ever-working Fancy with an intense cra^dng 
after a resting-place for my Thoughts in som.e principle that 
was derived from experience, but of which all other knowledge 
should be but so many repetitions under various limitations, 
even as circles^ squares, triangles, &c., &c., are but so many 
positions of space. And, lastly, that my eloquence was most 
commonly excited by the desire of running away and hiding 
myself from my personal and inward feelings, and not for the 
expression of them^ while doubtless this very effort of feeling 
gave a passion and glow to my thoughts and language on 
subjects of a general nature, that they otherwise would not have 
had. I fled in a Circle, still overtaken by the Feelings, from 
which I was ever more fleeing, with my back turned towards 
them ; but above all, my growing deepening conviction of the 
transcendency of the moral to the intellectual, and the inexpres- 
sible comfort and inward strength which 1 experience myself 
to derive as often as I contemplate truth realised into Being by 
a human Will ; so that, as I cannot love without esteem^ neither 
can I esteem without loving. Hence I love but few, but those 
I love as my own Soul ; for I feel that without them I should — 
not indeed cease to be kind and effluent, but by little and little 
become a soul-less fixed Star, receiving no rays nor influences 

The daring ken of Truth, the Patriot's part, 
And Pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart. 

Sloth jaundiced all ! and from my graspless hand 
Drop Friendship's precious pearls, like hour-glass sand, 
I weep, yet stoop not ! the faint anguish flows, 
A dreamy pang in Morning's feverish dose. 

Is this piled earth our Being^s passless mound ? 

Tell me, cold grave ! is Death with poppies crowned f 

Tired sentinel I ^mid fitfid starts I nod, 

And fain would sleep, though pillowed on a clod. 



198 

into my Being, a Solitude which I so trenible atj that I cannot 
attribute it even to the Divine Nature. 

GocZfather or not (have not Girls Godfathers?), the little 
lady shall be to me a dear Daughter, and I will make her love 
me by loving her own Papa and Mamma. God bless you. 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Colekidge. 



" Once^ when in the Eoman States, I entered a house of 
entertainment on a Friday, accompanied by a German artist, 
and, being hungry, asked for some ham or meat. The woman 
to whom I addressed myself said I could not have it ; it was 
fast day. I replied we were heretics. She still hesitated, when 
her husband growled out, — ^ Let them have it, let them have 
it ; they are damned already J Thus satisfying himself that, 
as we were heretics, or what, singular enough, is here consi- 
dered synonymous, philosophers, and therefore already damned, 
he could not injure us farther, but might benefit himself by 
ministering to our guilty appetites.^' 



" I have been reading Antony and Cleopatra. It is with 
me a prime favourite. It is one of the most gorgeous and 
sustained of all Shakspeare^s dramas. In particular do I dote 
upon the last half of the fifth act.^' 



" An American, by his boasting of the superiority of the 
Americans generally, but more especially in their language, 
once provoked me to tell him that * on that head the least said 
the better, as the Americans presented the extraordinary 
anomaly of a people without a language. That they had 
mistaken the English language for baggage (which is called 
plunder in America), and had stolen it/ Speaking of America, 
it is I believe a fact verified beyond doubt, that, some years 
ago it was impossible to obtain a copy of the Newgate Calendar, 
as they had aU been bought up by the Americans, "whether to 



LETTERS, ETC. 199 

suppress tliis blazon of their forefathers, or to assist in their 
genealogical researches, I could never learn satisfactorily." 



LETTEE XXXIL 

My deaeest Friend, Ramsgate^ Oct Sthj 1822. 

In the course of my past life I count four griping and 
grasping sorrows, each of which seemed to have my very heart 
in its hands, compressing or vn^inging. The first, when the 
Vision of a Happy Home sunk for ever, and it became impos- 
sible for me any longer even to hope for domestic happiness 
under the name of Husband, when I was doomed to know 

That names but seldom meet with Love, 
And Love wants courage without a name ! 

The second commenced on the night of my arrival (from 
Grasmere) in town with Mr. and Mrs. Montagu, when all the 
superstructure raised by my idolatrous Fancy during an 
enthusiastic and self-sacrificing Friendship of fifteen years — 
the fifteen bright and ripe years, the strong summer of my 
Life — bvirst like a Bubble ! But the Grief did not vanish 
with it, nor the love which was the stuff and vitality of the 

grief, though they pined away up to the moment of 's 

last total Transfiguration into Baseness ; when, with £1,200 
a year, and just at the moment that the extraordinary Bank- 
ruptcy of Fenner and Curtis had robbed me of every penny I 
had been so many years working for, every penny I pos- 
sessed in the world, and involved me in a debt of £150 to 
boot, he first regretted that he was not able to pay a certain 

bill of mine to his 's wife's brother, himself, ^ never 

wanted money so much in his life,' &c. &c. ; and an hour after 
attempted to extort from me a transfer to himself of all that I 
could call my own in the world — my books — as the condition 
of his paying a debt which in equity was as much, but in 
honour and gratitude was far more, his debt than mine ! 



200 LETTERS, ETC. 

My third sorrow was in some sort included In the second ; 
what the former was to Friendship the latter was to a yet more 
inward bond. The former spread a wider gloom over the 
world around me, the latter left a darkness deeper within 
myself; the former is more akin to indignation, and moody 
scorn at my own folly in my weaker moments, and to contem- 
plative melancholy and alienation from the Past in my ordinary 
state ; the latter had more of self in its character, but of a Self, 
emptied — a goiu'd of Jonas : and is this it under which I hoped 
to have prophesied ? 

My fourth commenced with the tidings of the charge against 
J . . . — remitted with the belief and confidence of the Falsehood 
of the charge — relapsed again — and again — and again — blended 
with the sad convictions, that neither E. nor I. thought of or felt 
towards me as they ought, or attributed any thing done for 
them to me ; and lastly, reached its height on the nineteenth 
day of E.'s fever by J.'s desertion of him, when it trembled in 
the scales whether he should live or die, and the cause of 
this desertion first awakening the suspicion that I had been 
deliberately deceived and made an accomplice in deceiving 
others. 

And yet, in all these four griefs, my recollection, as often 
as they were recalled to my mind, turned not to what I 
suffered, but on what account — at worst, I never thought of 
the sufferings apart from the causes and occasions of them ; but 
the latter were ever uppermost. It was reserved for the interval 
between six o'clock and twelve on that Saturday evening to 
bring a suffering which, do what I will, I cannot help thinking 
of and being affrighted by, as a terror of itself — a self-subsist- 
ing, separate something, detached from the cause. I cannot 
help hearing the sound of my voice at the moment when I . . . 
took me by surprise, and asked me for the money to pay a debt 
to, and take leave of, Mr. Williams, promising to overtake me 
if possible before I had reached his aunt Martha's, but at latest 
before five. "• Nay, say six. Be, if you can, by five, but say 



\ 



LETTERS, ETC. 201 

six." Then, when he had passed a few steps — " J ... six ; 
my God! think of the agony ^ the sore agony ^ of every 
moment after six ! " And though he was not three yards from 
me, I only saw the colour of his Face through my Tears ! — No 
more of this ! I will finish this scrawl after my return from 
the Beach. 

When I had left behind me what I had no power to make 
better or worse, and arrived at the sea side, I had soon reason 
to remember that I was not at Aome, or at Muddiford, or at 
Little Hampton, or at Eamsgate, but under the conjunct signs 
of Virgo and the Crab ; the one in the wane, the other in 
advance, yet in excellent agreement with the former, by virtue 
of its rare priv Ilege of advancing backward. In sober prose, I 
verily believe we should have found as genial a birth in a nest 
hillock of Termites or Bugaboos as with this single Ant-con- 
sanguineous. As soon therefore as dear Mr. Gillman retm-ned to 
us, you will not hold it either strange or unmse that, in agreeing 
to accompany him to Dover, the kingdom of France west of 
Paris, Eamsgate, Sandmch, and foreign parts in general, I 
determined to give myself up to each moment as it came, with 
no anticipations and with no recollections, save as far as is 
involved in the wish every now and then, that you had been 
with me ; and in this resolve it was that I destroyed the kit- 
cat or bust at least of the letter I had meant to have sent you. 
But oh ! how often have I wished, and do I wish, that you and 
Mrs. AUsop could form a household in common at Eamsgate 
with us next year. 

And now for your second Letter. What shall I say ? When 
our Griefs and Fears and agitations are strongly roused 
towards one object, we almost want some fresh memento to 
remind us that we have other Loves, other Interests. Forgive 
me if I tell you that your last letter did, in something of this 
way, make me feel afresh, that there was that in my very heart 
that called you Son as well as Friend, and reminded me that a 
Father's affection could not exist exempt from a Father's 



202 LETTERS, ETC. 

anxiety. I am fully aware that every syllable in the latter 
half of your letter proceeded from the strong two-fold desire at 
once to comfort and to conciliate, and that I ought to regard 
your remarks as the mere straining of the Soul towards an 
End felt and known to be pure and lovely ; and even so I do 
regard them, yet I cannot read them without anxiety : not 
indeed anxious Thoughts, but anxious Feeling. Sane or 
insane, fearful thing it is, when I can be comforted by an 
assm^ance of the latter ; but I neither know nor dare hear of 
any mid state, of no vague necessities dare I hear. Our own 
wandering thoughts may be suffered to become Tyrants over 
the mind, of which they are the Offspring and the most 
effective Viceroys, or substitutes of that dark and dim spiritual 
Personeity, whose whispers and fiery darts holy men have 
supposed them to be, and that these may end in the loss, or 
rather Forfeiture of Free agency, I doubt not. But, my 
dearest friend, I have both the Faith of Reason and the Voice 
of Conscience and the assurance of Scripture, that, " resist the 
evil one, and he will flee from you." But for self-condemna- 
tion, J . . . . would never have tampered with Fatalism ; and 
but for Fatalism, he would never have had such cause to con- 
demn himself. With truest love, 

Yom^s, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

P.S. Affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Allsop, in short, to 
you and yours. While I write the two last words, my lips 
felt an appetite to kiss the baby. 



This and the preceding letters are painful, very painful, to 
me. I know not whether they have not given birth to 
sensations more afflicting in the re-perusal, than they caused 
me to feel even at the time. Then, I could hope that the 
clouds v/hich darkened the life of hope would pass away, and 



203 

tliat the genial simsliine of my friend's mind would again 
shine, inward at least, with unobscured brilliancy. Now^ I 
can but gamer in my heart the experience of the past, to be 
conveyed, as all personal experience must be, to unwilling or 
inattentive ears : to be part of that experience which he 
himself so beautifully and so truly describes, as like the stern- 
lights of a vessel, illuminating only the past. In the instance 
alluded to, the extreme sensitiveness of my young friend 
caused him, to avoid a little present pain, so to act, as to give 
a far greater amount of pain to Mr. Coleridge than he could 
ever compensate, and to store up for himself the most acute 
and protracted regrets. Moral courage, my dear children, the 
daring to suffer the present evil, be it an expiation for the past, 
or as an offering or a testimony to convictions, not lightly 
attained, is always its own great reward. 

To say nothing^ or to say all you thiJiJc, and at all times, 
provided no personal offence is intended or sought to he given, 
is the course for an honest man, for a lover of truth, invariably 
to pursue. It may be said that the com^se of affairs is so 
complicated and so tortuous, that conduct to harmonise with it 
must be tortuous also, and that in the necessity that exists for 
numerous and skilful combinations, simplicity must altogether 
be cast aside as unsuited to the present state and necessities of 
the social condition. I have come to a wholly different 
conclusion. I deem it most important, even on these very 
grounds, and for these (to me, at least) always secondary 
objects, to preserve sincerity in the means, and simplicity in 
the end, however extensive may be the combinations by which 
that end is sought to be obtained. For if, in addition to the 
complications of society, and to the combinations necessary to 
our individual success, we superadd suppressions and those 
moral falsehoods which are worse and every way more injurious 
than direct lies, we render success far less probalile, and even 
in its attainment, less valuable, from the recollection of the 
very unworthy means by which it has been achieved. 



204 

I well know tte process by which men are led on to this 
fearful state of constant insincerity^ in matters of worldly 
interest, whether of fame, riches, or power, all of which might 
and yet willy I hope, be estimated at their proper value (whilst 
they are permitted to have any value at all), as means and 
not as ends. 



LETTEE XXXIIL 

My very dear Friend, Bee, 26^Zf, 1822. 

I might with strict truth assign the not only day after 
day, but hour after hour employment, if not through the whole 
period of, my waking time, yet through the whole of my 
writing power, as the cause of my not having written to you 
with my ot\ti hand ; but then I ought to add that it was 
enforced and kept up by the expectation of seeing you. There 
are two ways of giving you pleasure and comfort ; would to 
God I could have made the one compossihle vA\h the other 
and done both ! The first, the having finished the Logic in its 
three main divisions, — as the Canon, or that which prescribes 
the rule and form of all conclusion or conclusive reasoning; 
second, as the Criterion, or that which teaches to distinguish 
truth from falsehood, containing all the sorts, forms, and 
sources of error, and means of deceiving or being deceived ; 
third, as the Organ, or positive instrument for discovering 
truth, together with the general introduction to the whole. 

The second was to come to town, and pass a week with you 
and Mrs. Allsop. The latter I could not have done, and yet 
have been able to send you the present good tidings that with 
regard to the former we are in sight of land ; that Mr. Stut- 
field will give three days in the week for the next fortnight ; 
and that I have no doubt, notwithstanding Mrs. Coleridge and 
my little Sarah's expected arrival on Friday next, that by the 
end of January the whole book will not only have been 



LETTERS, ETC. 205 

finished, for that I expect will be tlie case next Sunday fort- 
night, but ready for the press. In reality, I have now little 
else but to transcribe, and even this would in part only be 
necessary, but that I must of course dictate the sentences to 
Mr. Stutfield and Mr. Watson, and shall therefore avail myself 
of the opportunity for occasional correction and improvement. 
When this is done, and can be offered as a whole to Murray or 
other Publisher, I shall have the Logical Exercises, or the 
Logic exemplified and applied in a critique on — 1. Condillac ; 
2. Paley ; 3. The French Chemistry and Philosophy, mth 
other miscellaneous matters from the present Fashions of the 
age, moral and political, ready to go to the Press with by the 
time the other is printed off ; and this without interrupting the 
greater work on Eeligion, of which the first Half, containing 
the Philosophy or ideal Truth, possibility, and a priori 
probability of the articles of Christian Faith, was completed 
on Sunday last. 

Let but these works be once done, and the responsibility off 
my conscience, and I have no doubt or dread of afterwards 
obtaining an honom-able sufficiency, were it only by school 
books, and compilations from my own memorandum volumes. 
The publication of my Shakspeare and other similar lectures, 
sheet per sheet, in Blackwood, with the aid of Mr. Frere's 
short-hand copies, and those on the History of Philosophy in 
one volume, would nearly suffice. 

I was unspeakably delighted to see Mrs. AUsop look so 
charmingly well. My affectionate regards to her, and a heart- 
uttered Happy, Happy, Happy Christmas to you both, one for 
each, and the third for the little girl, who (Mr. Watson assures 
me) has now the ground work and necessary pre-condition of 
thriving, though it may be some time before a notable change 
in the appearances may take place for the general eye. 
God bless you, and your friend, 
T. Allsop, Esq, S. T. CoLERiDaE 



206 LETTERS, ETC. 

" It is good to get and good to spend ; but It Is not well or 
seemly to cany the spirit of thrift into kind acts, nor a profuse 
spirit into thrift.'^ 

" Men are not more generous than women. Men desire the 
happiness of women apart from themselves, chiefly, if not only, 
when and where it would be an imputation upon a woman's 
affections for her to be happy ; and women, on their part, 
seldom cordially carry their wish for their husband's happiness 
and enjoyment beyond the threshold. Whether it is that 
women have a passion for nursing, or from whatever cause, 
they invariably discom-age all attempts to seek for health 
itself, beyond their own abode. When balloons, or these new 
roads upon which they say it will be possible to travel fifteen 
miles an hour, for a day together, shall become the common 
mode of travelling, women will become more locomotive ; — the 
health of all classes will be materially benefited. Women will 
then spend less time in attiring themselves — will invent some 
more simple head gear, or dispense with it altogether. 

" Thousands of women, attached to their husbands by the 
most endearing ties, and who would deplore their death for 
months, would oppose a separation for a few weeks in search of 
health, or assent so reluctantly, and with so much dissatisfaction 
as to deprive the remedy of all value — rather make it an eviL 
I speak of affectionate natures and of the various, but always 
selfish, guises of self-will. 

" Caresses and endearment on this side of sickening /oncZ/ies^, 
and affectionate interest in all that concerns himself, from a 
wife freely chosen, are what every man loves, whether he be 
communicative or reserved, staid or sanguine. But affection, 
where it exists, will always prompt or discover its own most 
appropriate manifestation. All men, even the most surly, are 
influenced by affection, even when little fitted to excite it. I 
could have been happy with a servant girl had she only in 
sincerity of heart responded to my affection." 



LETTEES, ETC. 207 

On this matter I coiild enlarge, but shall defer It for the 
present, seeing that all the materials are not yet collected npon 
which to foiTQ a correct judgment. 



LETTER XXXIV -^ 

My deae Allsop, Grove. Higligate, Dec. lOf/z. 1823. 

I shall be alone on Simday. and shall be happy to spend 
it with you. Ever since the disappearance of a most unsightly 
eruption on my Face I have been, with but short intennission, 
annoyed with the noise as of a distant Forge hammer inces- 
santly sounding, so that for some time I actually supposed it 
to be an outward sound. To me. who never before knew by 
any sensation that I had a head upon my shoulders , this you 
may suppose is extremely harrassing to the spirits and dis- 
tractive of my attention. ]\Ir3. Gillman, on stepping fi'om my 
attic, slipt on the first step of a steep flight of nine high stairs, 
precipitated herself and fell head foremost on the fifth stair ; 
and when at the piercing scream I nished out, I found her 
lying on the landing place, her head at the wall. Even nov 
the Image, and the Terror of the Image, blends with the 
recollection of the Past a strange expectancy, a fearful sense 
of a something still to come ; and breaks in, and makes stop- 
pages, as it were, in my Thanks to God for her providential 
escape. For an escape we all must think it, though the small 
bone of her left arm was broken, and her wrist sprained. She 
went without alight, though -Oh! the vanity of Prophecies, 
the truth of which can be established only by the proof of 
their uselessness) two nights before I had expostulated with her 
on this account with some warmth, having previously more 
than once remonstrated against it, on stairs not familiar and 
without carpeting. 

As I shall rely on your spending Simday here, and with me 



208 

alone, I shall defer to that time all but my tenderest regards to 
Mrs. AUsop, and the superfluous assurance that I am evermore, 
my dearest AUsop, 

Your most cordial, attached, and 

Affectionate friend, 
T. AUsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

P. S. — You will be delighted with my new room. 



" The notion, that affections are of less importance than 
advantages, or that the latter dare even be weighed in the same 
scales, is less truly described as opposite to my opinion than as 
alien from my very nature. As to accomplishments, I do not 
know whether it is right to cherish a positive opinion of an 
indifferent thing, that is neither good nor evil. If we leave 
all moral relations out of view, such as vanity, or the disposi- 
tion to underrate the solidities of the soul, male or female, &c., 
&c., the question of accomplishmenis (as they are absm^dly 
called) seems to me to depend on the individual woman, in the 
same way that dress does. Of two equally amiable and 
equally beloved women, one looks better in an evening, the 
other in a morning dress. It is just as it suits^ and so with 
accomplishments. There are two women, to whom, though in 
different ways, I have been deeply attached in the course of my 
life. The one had no so-called accomplishments^ and not only 
at the time when I had faith in the return, did I say, " And I 
love her all the better,'' but I am stiU convinced that such 
would be my opinion of any such woman. Accomplishments 
(in which nothing good, useful, or estimable, is or can be 
accomplished) would not suit her. Just as I should say to a 
daughter, or should have said to the lassy in question, had she 
been my wife, " My dear ! I like to see you with bracelets ; but 
your hand and fingers are prettiest without any ornament, 
they don't suit rings J^ The other lady, on the contrary, became 
them ; they were indeed so natural for her that they never 



LETTERS, ETC. 209 

strike me as accomplishments. And, to do her justice, I must 
say that I am persuaded that the consciousness of them occu- 
pies as little room in her own thoughts. 

" Accomplishments, what are they ? why truly the very 
want of the French, Italian, smattering of terms without 
relation to things or properties of any kind, and piano-fortery, 
which meets one now with Jack-o^-lantern ubiquity, in every 
first and second story, in every street, is become a presumptive 
accomplishment as the being free from debt is a negative stock, 
Mrs. C . . . had no meretricious accomplishments. Did you 
ever suspect, from anything I ever said, that this lay in the 
way of my domestic happiness ? And she, too, had no accom- 
plishments, to whom the man in the poet sighed forth the 

' Dear maid ! no prattler at a mother's knee 
Was e'er so deeply prized as I prize thee^ 
Why was I made for love, and love denied to me ?' " 



The following letter addressed to me, arrived on Christmas- 
Eve, and was opened by Mrs ; who replied that 

I was spending my Christmas with my parents, but that had 
I been at home this was a season of family re-unions. 

This will serve to explain the letter which follows ; which I 
give to show the pain caused by a slight misapprehension, and 
the great anxiety of the writer to remove an erroneous 
impression. 



LETTER XXXV. 

My dearest Allsop, Dec. 2^th, 1823. 

I forgot to ask you, and so did Mr. and Mrs. G. . . , 
whether you could dine with us on Christmas-day — or on 
New Year's-day — or on both ! If you can, need I say that I 
shall be glad. 

14 



210 LETTERS, ETC. 

My noisy forge-hammer is still busy ; quick, thick, and 
fervent. 

With kindest regards to Mrs. Allsop, 

Your ever faithful and affectionate, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



LETTER XXXVI. 

My dear Mrs. Allsop, 

Indeed, indeed you have sadly misunderstood my last- 
hurried note. So over and over again has Mr. Allsop been 
assured that every invitation to him included you, so often has 
he been asked to consider one meant for both, that in a few 
lines scrawled in the dark, with a distracting, quick, thick, 
and noisy beating as of a distant forge-hammer in my head, 
and, lastly, written, not so much under any expectation of 
seeing him (in fact for Christivas-iaj I had none), as from a 
nervous jealousy of any customary mark of respect and affection 
being omitted, the ceremony of expressing your name did not 
occur to me. But the blame, whatever it be, lies with me, 
wholly, exclusively on me ; for on asking Mr, Gillman whether 
an invitation had been sent to you, he replied by asking 
me if I had not spoken, and on my saying it was now too 
late, he still desired me to write, his words being, — ^^ For 
though Allsop must know how glad we always are to see him, 
yet still, as far as it is a mark of respect, it is his due." 
Accordingly I wrote. But after the letter had been sent to the 
post, on going to Mrs. Gillman to learn how she was, and 
saying that I had just scrawled a note in the dark in order not 
to miss the post, she expressed her disapprobation as nearly as 
I can remember in these words : — ^' I do not think a mere 
ceremony any mark of respect to intimate friends. How, in 
such weather as this, and short days, can it be supposed that 
Mrs. Allsop could either leave the children or take them? 



LETTERS, ETC. 211 

But to expect Mr. Allsop to dine away from Ms family at this 
time is what I would not even appear to do, for I should think 
it very WTong if he did." I was vexed, and could only reply, 
— ^^ This comes of doing things of a huny. However, Allsop 
knows me too well to attribute to me any other feehng or pur- 
pose than the real ones.'' I give you my word and honour, 
my dear madame, that these were, to the best of my recollec- 
tion, the very words ; but I am quite certain that they contain 
the same substance. And for this reason, knowing how it 
would vex and fret on her spirits that you had been offended, 
and (if the letter of itself without any interpretation derived 
from the character or known sentiments of the writer were to 
decide it), justly offended, I have not shown her your note, nor 
mentioned the circumstance to her ; for this sad accident has 
pulled her down sadly, coming too in conjunction with the 
distressful state of my health and spirits ; for such is my state 
at present, that though I would myself have run any hazard 
to have spent to-moiTow with Miss Southey, my own Sarah's 
friend and twin- sister, and with Miss Wordsworth at Monk- 
house's, in Gloster-place ; yet Mr. Gillman has both dissuaded 
and forbidden me as my medical adviser. I trust, therefore, 
that, finding Mrs. Gillman more than blameless^ and that in me 
the blame was in the judgment and not in the intention^ you 
will think no more of it, but do me the justice to believe that 
any intentions or feelings of which I have been conscious have 
ever been of a kind most contrary to any form of disrespect, 
omisive or commissive ; to which, let me add, that / should 
be doing what Mr. Allsop (I am sure) would not do, if having 
shown you consciously any c?2^respect I continued to subscribe 
myself Ms friend, not to speak of any profession of being what 
in very truth I am, my dear Mrs. Allsop, 

Sincerely and affectionately yourSj 

S. T. Coleridge. 



This letter is written in a very hurried and irregular 



212 LETTERS, ETC. 

manner, showing the exceeding pain the writer suffered from 
the thought of having hurt or offended another. Truly did he 
exemplify his own position, that great minds are ever gentle 
and affectionate. 



LETTER XXXVIL 

Dear Mrs. Allsop, OrovCj Highgate^ April 8th, 1824. 

There are three rolls of paper, Mr. Wordsworth's trans- 
lation of the first, second, and third books, two in letter-paper, 
one in a little writing-book, in the drawer under the side-board 
in your dining-room. Be so good as to put them up and give 
them to the bearer should Mr. AUsop not be at home. 

My dear Allsop, 

You I know will have approved of my instant compliance 
with Mr. Gillman's request of returning with him ; and I 
know, too, that both Mrs. Allsop and yourself will think it 
superfluous in me to tell you what you must be sure I cannot 
but feel. I trust that when I next return from you, I shall 
have — not to thank you less — but with less painful recollections 
of the trouble and anxiety I have occasioned you. 

In the agitation of leaving Mrs. Allsop, I forgot to take with 
me the translation of Virgil. Could I, that is, dared I, wait 
till Sunday, I might make it one way of inducing you to spend 
the day with me. Upon the whole, however, I had better 
send than increase my anxieties, so I will send Eiley with 
this note. 

My Grandfatherly love and kisses to the Fairy Prattler 
and the meek boy. I did heave a long-drawn wish this morn- 
ing, as the sun and the air too were so genial, that the latter 
had been in the good woman's house at Highgate well wrapped 
up. A fortnight would do wonders for the dear little fellow. 



213 

You and Mrs. All?op may rely on it that I would see him 
every day during his stay here, if there were only one hoiu' in 
which it did not rain vehemently. 

God bless you, 
And your obliged and most 
affectionately attached fiiend, 
T. Allsopj Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



Thus early, my dear children, did you become the objects of 
his affection and affectionate solicitude. It is pleasant to me, 
almost as pleasant as it is painful, to recall those days, days 
when from many causes my anxieties were great and my 
position altogether most ungenial. and which, but for y-oiu* 
dear sakes, and for one, then as now, dearer to me than all 
beside, would have been one of unmixed evil. From this 
position I have now happily escaped into a state of greater 
fi'eedom, which, if it shall permit me to realise the objects of 
my earliest and steadfast aspirations, objects in which you. as 
Friends rather than as children, will have active and pleasayit 
duties allotted, T^ill leave me little more to wish, hardly any- 
thing to hope. 



This letter was written after a sojourn of about ten days in 
London, respecting which I have preserved the coiTCspondence, 
but which, as it is of interest chiefly to myself, would be out 
of place here. It is a painful fact, if any general condition or 
facts can with propriety be said to be painful, that those alone 
who have been steeped in anxieties and in suffering can appre- 
ciate the anxieties or sufferings of others. Prosperous men 
avoid and eschew all approximation to distress or im.easiness in 
real life, however they may indulge in mental sympathy T^uth 
suffering, or occasionally afford pecimiary assistance through 
the hands of third parties. Hence those who have themselves 
passed thi*ough mental and pecuniary distress are alone foimd 



214 LETTERS, ETC. 

to make sacrifices as a tribute to, or from sympathy with, their 
own past trials ; though it may fairly be doubted, whether 
suffering ever yet produced patient consideration for the 
anxieties of another, or increased the real charities j though it 
may greatly enlarge the sympathies and the sensibility which 
pass current as charity, that greatest of all the virtues. 



LETTEE XXXVIIL 

My DEAREST Friend, April 14^A, 1824. 

I am myself at my ordinaiy average of Health, and beat 
off the blue Devils with the Ghosts of defunct hopes, chasing 
the Jack-o'-lanterns of foolish expectation as well as I can, in 
the which, believe me, I derive no small help from the Faith 
that in your affection and sincerity I have at least one entire 
counterpart of the Thoughts and Feelings with which I am 
evermore and most sincerely 

Your affectionate friend, 
T. AUsop, Esq, S. T. Coleridge. 

My kindest love and remembrance to Mrs. Allsop, and 
assure her that I called this morning at Mrs. Constable's, in- 
duced by the very fine though unwarm day, to hope I might 
find the little boy there, and was rather disappointed to see 
her return without him. But, doubtless, we are entitled every 
day to expect a change of the present to a more genial wind. 
If the meek little one does not crow and clap his wings in a 
week or so from Thursday, it shall not be for want of being 
looked after. 



LETTEE XXXIX. 

My DEAREST Friend, April 27th, 1824. 

I direct this to your house, or firm should I say? because 

I should not think myself justified in exciting in Mrs. Allsop 

an alarm, for which I have no more grounds than my own 



LETTERS, ETC. 215 

apprehensions and unlearned conjectures. And yet having 
these bodings, I cannot feel quite easy in withholding them 
from you. On Saturday, the morning Mrs. Allsop was here, 
I was in high hope, the little boy looking so much clearer and 
livelier than on the Thursday ; but the weather since then being 
on the whole genial, and the baby showing no mark of progress, 
but rather the reverse, and it seeming to me each retmniing 
day to require a stronger effoii: to rouse its attention, and the 
relapse to a dulness, which it is evident the upright posture 
alone prevented from being a doze, becoming more immediate, 
I cannot repel the boding that there is either some mesenteric 
affection, which sometimes exists in infants without betraying 
itself by any notable change in the ingestion or the egestae, 
yet producing on the brain an effect similar to that which 
flatulence, or confined gas pressing on the nerves of the 
stomach, will do ; or else that it is a case of chi'onic (slow) 
hydrocephalus. Against this fear I have to say, first, that I 
have not been able to detect any insensibility to light in the 
pupil of its eyes, and that the little innocent has no con^nilsive 
twitches, and neither starts nor screams in its sleep. For the 
first I have no opportunity (the sun being clouded) of making 
a decisive experiment, and requested Mrs. Constable to try 
it with a candle, as soon as it was taken up after dark ; and 
though the presence of this symptom is an infallible e^-idence 
of the presence of efinsion, or some equivalent cause of pressure, 
its absence is no sure proof of the absence of the disease, 
though it is a presumption in favour of the degree. The fi'ee- 
dom from pertiu'bation in sleep, however, is altogether a 
favourable cii'cumstance, and allows a hope that the continued 
heaviness and immediate relapse into slumber on being placed 
horizontally may be the effect of weakness. But then the 
poor little fellow habitually keeps its hand to its head, and 
there is a sensible heat and throbbing at the temples. On the 
whole, you should be prepared for the possible event, and Mrs. 
Constable is natiu-ally very anxious on this point, not merely 



216 LETTERS, ETC. 

lest any neglect should be suspected on her part, but likewise 
from an anticipation of the mother's agitation, should she at 
any time come up just to witness the baby's last struggles, or 
to find no more what she was expecting to see in incipient 
recovery. 

Do not misunderstand me, my dearest friend, nor let this 
letter alarm you beyond what the facts require. I have seen 
no decisive marks, no positive change for the worse, no measur- 
able r^^ro-gression. I have of course repeatedly spoken to 
Mr. Gillman, but he says it is impossible to form any con- 
clusive opinion. There is no proof that it may not be weakness 
at present and hitherto, but neither dare he determine what 
the continuance of the weakness may not produce. Nothing 
can warrant ably be attempted in this uncertainty but mild 
alteratives, watchful attention to the infant's regularity, with 
as cordial nourishment as can be given without endangering 
heat or inflammatory action. 

I do not think that I have been able to remain undisturbed 
an hour together for the last three days, such a tumble fh of 
persons with requests or claims on me has there been. House- 
hunting, &c., &c. 



The genial glow of Friendship once deadened can never 
be rekindled. 

*' Idly we supplicate the Powers above — 
There is no Resurrection for a Love 
That uneclipsed, unthwarted, wanes away 
In the chilled heart by inward self-decay. 
Poor mimic of the Past ! the love is o'er, 
That must resolve to do what did itself of yore.*' 

God bless you, and your ever affectionate 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

P.S. To my great surprise and delight, Mr. Anster came in 
on us this afternoon, and in perfect health and spirits. 



LETTERS, ETC. 217 

To you, my dear Eob, this letter will be a reminiscence of 
interest in after life, should life and health be preserved to you •, 
and I cannot choose but think that it must also find a response 
in the heart of every parent, still more of every mother. Of 
all the men, ordinary or extraordinary, I have ever known, 
Coleridge was the one in whom the child-like ^ the almost 
infantile, love and joyance, giving birth to or rather inter- 
mingled with perfect sympathy and identity of feeling, most 
predominated. His mind was at once the most masculine, 
feminine, and yet child-like (and, in that sense, the most 
innocent) which it is possible to image. The expressions 
which conclude this letter I know were only forced from him 
in a moment of imperfect sympathy, a short interval of ebb 
in the genial current of affection and love, and a proof how 
entirely his being yearned for sympathy ; not similarity in 
taste, in feeling, or in judgment, but a love for the good, the 
beautiful, and the loveable, which become more good, more 
beautiful, and more loveable, when contemplated by minds 
essentrally individual and independent under the same aspect. 



LETTEE XL. 

My DEAREST Friend, March 20th, 1825, 

I should have answered your last but for three causes : 
first, that I had proofs to correct and a passage of great nicety 
to add, neither of which could be deferred without injustice to 
the Publishers, and the breach of a definite promise on my 
part ; second, that I was almost incapacitated from thinking of 
and doing anything as it ought to be done by poor Mrs, G.^s 
restless and interrogating anxieties, which in the first instance 
put the whole working Hive of my Thoughts in a whirl and a 
Bur ; and then, when I see her care-worn countenance, and 
reflect on the state of her health (and it is difficult to say which 
of the two, ill-health or habitual anxiety, is more cause and 
more effect), a sharp fit of the Heart-ache follows. 



218 LETTERS, ETC. 

But enough of ttis Subject. I ought to be ashamed of 
myself for troubling you with it ; you have enough frets and 
frictions of your own. And so I proceed to the third cause, 
which is that (how far imputable to the mood of mind I was 
in, I cannot say) I did not understand your letter. 

Is there any definite service, or any chance of any definite 
service, great or small, that I can do or promote, or expedite, 
by coming to town? If there be, let me have a line or a 
monosj^Uable Yes, and mention the time. I would have set off 
and taken the chance without asking the question, but that I 
have so many irons in the fire at this present moment, — 1, my 
Preface ; 2, my Essay 5 3, a Work prepared for the Press by 
my Hebrew Friend, in which I am greatly interested, morally 
and crumenically, though not like the Modern Descendants of 
Heber, one of a crumenimulga Natio, L e. a purse-milking set ; 
and 4, Eevisal, &c., for a friend only less near than yourself. 

Mr. Chance, I take it for granted, has written to you. My 
opinion is, that he will be a valuable man, not only generally, 
but especially to that which alone concerns me — your comfort 
and happiness. He is a self-satisfied man, but of the very 
kindest and best sort. Prosperous in all his concerns, and 
with peace in his own conscience and family, I regard such 
vainness but as the overflow of humanity. I do not like him 
the better /or it ; but I should not like him the better without it. 
Meantime he is active, shrewd, a thorough man of business ; 
sanguine I should think, both by constitution and habitual 
success : and, under any sudden emergency, I think that Mr. 
Chance, not so deeply interested, and yet (such is his nature) 
with equal liveliness in feeling, would be a comfort to you. 

I shall miss the post if I do more than add, that whatever 
really serves you, will (and on his death-pillow quite as much 
as in his present garret) delight 

Your sincere and affectionate Mend, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



LETTERS, ETC. 219 

It will be necessary to the better understanding of some 
passages of this letter, to refer very briefly to matters affecting 
myself, and my position at that time. 

At the date of this letter I had been for nearly six years 
actively engaged in an extensive business, which, owing partly 
to want of unity of opinion and action amongst those most 
interested, and partly to changes which were beyond control, 
had resulted in serious loss, and still more serious deterioration 
iu the value of the property embarked ; a loss and a deterior- 
ation which I even then saw could never be retrieved, and 
could only be parried by a system of contrivances, with 
anxiety and discredit attendant upon the means, and loss and 
ruin as the assured end. 

Under these circumstances, and not with any view to get rich 
in haste, did I adventure in one of the undertakings with which 
the time abounded. I owe it to truth to state, that it was a 
sound, useful, practicable project,* and that it only failed from 
the unfitness of the men who were associated in its manage- 
ment, and from the general discredit into which all similar 
undertakings fell at this era. 

I here state as a beacon to others, that, great as my losses 
had been, first, in the business in which I had, for six years, 
incurred yearly pecuniary damage 5 second, by the very serious 
losses attendant upon the relinquishment of the undertaking, 
these would have been parried, and, such is the force of custom, 
I should probably still have clung to the business in which I 
had been so great a loser, had I not, in the plenitude of my 
confidence, accepted a draft for a very gTcat amount, for the 
use and accommodation of parties, upon whose means I had 
the most entire confidence, and in their honour, if possible, a 
still more implicit reliance. Will it be credited that, before 

* This very project has been revived, and is now carried on with 
advantage by a private company. It was, as / always foresaw it 
would be, adopted by those on the spot out of the necessities of their 
condition. 



220 LETTERS, ETC. 

this draft reached maturity (a dissolution of partnership having 
taken place between the drawers), that the senior and more 
affluent partner placed this very bill in the hands of the worthy 
Member for Leominster, and himself, being an attorney, com- 
menced proceedings for its recovery, although the circumstances 
were detailed, and the undertaking of the parties, this very 
attorney being one, were known to that representative of the 
People : and that this very person so placing the draft in the 
Honourable Member's hands, knew it was accepted on the faith of 
his means, and that I held his and his partner's joint undertaking? 
Above all, wiU it be believed that this very man, whom I had 
thus assisted with my acceptance, was the attorney in the action? 
I mention these circumstances neither in anger nor in pity. 
Me they have not injured, unless the anxiety of those days, 
and the anxiety they caused to one most dear to me, may in 
some degree have impaired those buoyant and joyous hopes 
(common to ardent temperaments) before their appointed time. 
On the contrary, by severing a connexion I was not in a con- 
dition to abandon of myself, I have been saved years of con- 
tinued and hopeless anxiety, and have thus arrived at a position 
from whence I can look forward to the realisation of the hope, 
which has been to me an abiding source of comfort in all my 
strivings, the prospect of which has ever soothed and supported 
me — a country life ; to end my life in the pursuits and amid the 
occupations of my childhood. That you, my dearest children, 
may be free from the soiling influences of buying and selling, from 
the frightful insincerity and heartlessness which they engender, 
that you may find a happy home away from scenes of self- 
seeking competition and the debasing motives which may yet 
be said to be natural in large communities, is now almost the 
only wish I have ungratified. I have ever made, as much as 
possible, " the chosen employments of the years in hope^ the 
relaxations of the time present ; of the years devoted to present 
duties, and among them to the means of realising that hope ; 
thus have I kept my inward trains of thought, my faculties, 



LETTERS, ETC. 221 

and my feelings, in a state of fitness, and as it were contem- 
pered to a Life of ease, and capable of enjoying Leisure, because 
both able and disposed to employ it.'' Not having been able 
to Kft my means to the extent of the wants sanctioned, almost 
necessitated, by conventional habits, I have succeeded in 
reducing my needs to the measure of my condition. I have 
attained, though somewhat seared in the conflict, content and 
mental repose, without having passed through or sought refuge 
in that most cheerless condition. Resignation, I can yet say, 

" Homo sum ; a me alienum nihil humam puto.'* 

" So was it when my Hfe began, 
So is it now I am a man, 
So let it be when I grow old, 

Or let me die.'^ 



I recollect well — as it were only yesterday — a little excur- 
sion I made into the wilder parts of the Peak with my worthy 
friend and schoolfellow, Mr. John Bromley of Derby. It was 
a very sultry day, when having with some difficulty led our 
horses do^sTi the precipitous declivity, which fi'om the summit 
of the shivering Mountain leads into the beautiful Dale of E., 
or E-dale, we proceeded through that most interesting and most 
secluded spot on our return to Bakewell, and arrived, weary 
and heated, at the village (how beautifully named) of Hope. 
There, having refreshed and rested ourselves, we were pre- 
paring to continue our ride, when the appearance of a man, 
who, by an expression of meekness and benevolence, at once 
created an interest in my heart, detained me for some time. 

From this man of many sorrows, with whom I had long 
and fervid colloquy, I first learned that Eesignation was only 
acquiescence in that which was felt to be wrong or unjust, 
or undeserved ; and was a very different condition from con- 
tent. Whilst the impressions were yet vivid, or rather whilst 
they were yet fresh in my recollection, I wrote to my revered 
friend, expressing more clearly than 1 can hope to convey to 



222 LETTERS, ETC. 

you now, my repugnance and utter dislike of Eesignation. 
Eesignation to, or acquiescence in, that which is felt to be an 
evil, a sorrow, or a grievous injury, loss or infliction, is of 
veiy doubtful value, is at best but suffering superseded, not 
Enjo^onent superinduced ; whilst Content, whatever may be 
the condition of mind, body, or estate with which it co-exists, 
leaves a man to hope, that highest of human delights, whilst 
at the same time it secures him from its opposite, fear. It 
seems that condition in which the energies, mental and 
physical, find their equipoise and equilibrium ; where they all 
exist and act in harmony ; where the discords are neutralised, 
if not entirely withdrawn ; where the atmosphere is such, that 
they can no longer make themselves heard. 

^' For this the best preparative is a belief in philosophical 
necessity. '^ Eead again and again this passage, which I would 
more frequently impress upon yom^ attention did I not fear 
that the iteration might defeat the effect I seek to produce. 



LETTEE XLI. 

My dearest Friend, April 30th, 1825. 

Having disburthened myself of the main loads of 
outward obligation at least that pressed upon me, my Essay 
for the E. S. L., and my Aids to Eeflection, with other matters 
not so expressly my own, but having the same, if not greater, 
demands on such quantity of time, as bodily pain and dis- 
qualification, with unprecludible interruption, have enabled me 
to make use of, I take the ver^/ first moment of the Furlough to 
tell you that I have been perplexed both by your silence and 
your absence. In fact, I had taken for gi^anted you were in 
Derbyshire, tiU this afternoon, when I saw one who had met 
you yesterday. 

Now I cannot recollect anything that can — I am sure, ought 



LETTERS, ETC. 223 

to have given you offence, unless it were my non-performance 
of the request communicated to me by Mr. Jameson. 

I was ever in the stijie of my reflected anxieties, i. e, anxieties 
felt by reflection from those of others, and my Tangle of 
Things-to-he-done^ solicitous to see and talk with you. You 
must not feel wounded if, loving you so truly as I do, and 
feeling more and more every week that nothing is worth living 
for but the consciousness of living aright, I was nervous if you 
will, with regard to the effect of this undertaking on the fi^ame 
of yom- moral and intellectual Being. In the meantime, you 
never came near me, so that I might have been able to rectify 
my opinions, or rather to form them ; and I felt, and still feel, 
that I would gladly go into a gaiTet and work from morning 
to late night, at any work I could goi money by, and more 
than share my pittance with you and yoiu's, than see you 
unhappy with twenty thousand at your command. 

Do not, my dearest Friend, therefore let my perplexities, 
derived in great measure fi'om my unacquaintance with the 
facts, and to which my ever- wakeful affection gave the origin, 
prevent you from treating, as you were w^ont to do. 

Your truly sincere 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 



Whilst I write, my attention is called to a work where this 
Great and Gentle Being is called bigoted, uncharitable, and I 
know^ not what harsh terms are huddled and upheaped upon 
his Honoured name. If I had no other object but to disabuse 
the minds of those who are likely to be influenced by this 
work, I should persevere ; regarding, though I may, an in- 
justice done to another as the greatest misfortune that can 
befaU the perpetrator. Well indeed has the Departed said, 
that the world is a great Labyrinth in which all men take 
different ways, and abuse all who do not take the same way. 
Hence I hold it safe at all times to say / instead of it. What 
do we really express ? our opinions. Why not then couple 



224 LETTERS, ETC. 

the opinion with the Being who holds or propounds it ? To 
what then does the opinion thus impersonally expressed 
amount ? That lie^ the writer of this Eeview, thinks wisely, 
or it may be otherwise. Is he not, however, dishonest in 
bringing to bear upon the character, the reputation, or the 
conduct of another man, not facts, not merely the weight of 
his own arguments or opinions, whatever may be their worth, 
but the ponderous we, or the more insidious and dishonest it. 
Let us have the opinion of Henry Brougham, of Sydney Smith, 
of Francis Jeffery^ of any one man, young or old, and he will 
be careful in his aflSrmations. I am inclined to honour and 
hope well of the attempts of Mr. Eoebuck, Mr. Fox, and my 
high purposed and honest Friend, John Bell, who have nobly 
set the example of writing on subjects so important to all 
without the Stamp, and have given their opinions, under their 
own names, in their own Journals, and for every word of 
which they are thus morally and legally responsible. 



" I think the praise of Folly is the most pleasant Book of 
Erasmus.'^ 

" The distich which he returned to Sir Thomas More in the 
place of the Horse he had borrowed, is as good as was any 
Steed in the Stable of that most excellent Utopian. I cannot 
see how a good Catholic could refuse to receive it. He ought 
to be prepared to renounce his religion who shrinks from the 
necessary, inevitable, and legitimate consequences to which it 
must lead. Here it is : 

*' Quod mihi dixisti 
De corpore Christi 
Crede quod edas et edis, 
Sic tibi rescribo 
De tuo Palfrido 
Crede quod habeas et habes." 



LETTERS, ETC, 225 

Garrick, 

" The warmest admirers of histrionic merit would not 
willingly be supposed to overlook the difference, both in kind 
and degree, between an excellence that in its very nature is 
transient, or continuing, only as an echo, in the memory of a 
single generation, while the name alone remains for posterity, 
and a power, enduring as the Soul of Man and commensurate 
with the human language. 

But, without dreading the imputation of a wish to balance 
weights so unequal, we may assert that if ever two great men 
might seem to have been made for each other, we have this 
correspondency presented to us in the instance of Garrick and 
Shakspeare. It will be sufficient for me to direct attention to 
one peculiarity, the common and exclusive characteristic of 
both, — the union of the highest Tragic and Comic Excellence 
in the same Indi\4dnal. This indeed supersedes the necessity 
of mentioning the particular merits which it implies and com- 
prehends, while it is eminently and in the exactest sense of the 
word characteristic^ inasmuch as this transcendent power sprung 
from the same source in both, — from an insight into human 
nature at its fountain head, which exists in those creations of 
Genius alone, in which the substance and essential forms are 
the Gifts of Meditation and self-research, and the indi\ddual- 
ising accidents, and the requisite drapery, are supplied by 
observation and acquaintance mth the world. We may then 
hope for a second Garrick or of an approach to a Shakspeare 
where we find a knowledge of Man united to an equal know- 
ledge of Men, and both co-existing with the power of giving 
Life and Individuality to the products of both. For such a 
being possesses the rudiments of every character in himself, 
and acquires the faculty of becoming^ for the moment, whatever 
character he may choose to represent. He combines in his own 
person at once the materials and the workman. The precious 
proofs of this rare excellence in our Greatest Dramatic Poet 
are in the hands of all men. To exhibit the same excellence 

15 



226 

in our greatest actor, we can conceive no more lively or impres- 
sive way than by presenting him in the two extreme Poles of 
his Creative and almost Protean Genius — in his Richard the 
Third and his Abel Drugger." 



" In the language of prophecy, the first and prominent 
symptom of a good or evil will, or influencing tendency, is 
brought forward as the condition or occasion of all that follows. 
The first link in the chain of effects is made the representa- 
tive of the common cause of them all, or the good or evil state 
of the moral Being of the agents. So, for instance, a turbulent 
malcontent disposition in large classes of a country, with the 
assertion of Rights^ unqualified by, and without any reference 
to, duties, a vague Lust for Power, mistaken for, and counter- 
feiting the love of. Liberty — 

* Licence they mean when they cry Liberty, 
For who loves that, must first be wise and good — ' 
show themselves first in clubs, societies, political unions, &c., 
&c. And this, as the first prominent symptom, foretels and 
becomes itself a powerful efficient cause of the disruption, dis- 
organisation, and anarchy that follow. Most truly, therefore 
— indeed what great truth and principle of St^te Wisdom can 
be mentioned which is not to be found in the oracle of the 
Hebrew Prophets — most truly doth Isaiah proclaim — ch. viii. 
V. 9, " Associate yourselves, ye people ! and ye shall be 
broken in pieces. Give ear, all ye of far countries! Gird 
yourselves (f.e. form yourselves into Clubs as with Girdles), and 
ye shall be broken in pieces." 



" It at once soothes and amuses me to think — -nay, to know, 
that the time will come when this little volume of my dear, 
and well nigh oldest friend, dear Mary Lamb, will be not only 
enjoyed but acknowledged as a rich jewel in the treasury of 
our permanent English Literature ; and I cannot help running 
over in my mind the long list of celebrated writers, astonish- 



LETTERS, ETC. 227 

ing Geniuses ! Novels, Eoraances, Poems, Histories, and 
dense Political Economy quartos, wliicli, compared with Mrs. 
Leicester's School, will be remembered as often and prized as 
highly as Wilkie's and Glovers Epics and Lord Bolingbroke's 
Philosophies compared with Robinson Crusoe ! " 



All my recollections of Sir James Mackintosh were mislaid, 
or, I fear, lost, together with many letters of Charles Lamb 
and of Coleridge, on the occasion of a removal about six years 
ago. The only thing that I distinctly retain is a hon mot 
which Coleridge considered very felicitous. 

Speaking of Mr. Hume, who had recently distinguished 
himself by something connected with finance — a loan for 
Greece, I think — as an extraordinary man, — ^' Yes," said 
Mackintosh, " he is : he is an extraordinary man — an extra- 
ordinary ordinary man." 



LETTEE XLIL 

My DEAR Friend, Saturday^ May 2nd^ 1825. 

I am sure you did not mean that the interest I feel in 
this undertaking was one which I was likely to throw off, or 
one which there was any chance of my not retaining : but I 
would fain have you not even speak or write below that line 
of friendship and mutual implicit reliance, on which you and I 
stand. We are in the world, and obliged to chafe and chaffer 
with it ; hut we are not of the world^ nor will we use its idioms 
or adopt its brogue. 

God bless you, and your affectionate Fnend, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

Goldsmith makes one of his Characters say of the Magazines 
or Reviews of his day, '' They hate each other, but I like 
them all." I have known, with less or gi^eater intimacy, 
many men of note and great attainments, who have hated or 



228 

mistaken (if Indeed these are not convertible terms) each other, 
and yet I have found something not only to admire, but 
something to love^ in them all. You have seen the expression 
applied to Cobbett, and you will see what is said of Hazlitt, 
O'Connell, and Owen, in the subsequent portion of these 
reminiscences. Now first of the First. 

With William Cobbett, I once passed three days; three 
days of the most delightful interest throughout. He was, per- 
haps, at the zenith of his influence (it was before he sunk into 
Parliament), and in the meridian of his powers. It was in the 
Five hard Parishes, as he always called them, in Hampshire, 
in the stronghold of the Parsons — the large sheep and arable 
Farms. 

He then and there held a Court of Enquiry touching the 
misdeeds of the millionaires, the Barings : and truly, if what 
was there stated and confirmed and corroborated to iteration by 
all who were likely to be cognisant of the facts, is worthy of 
any credit, most foul weong was done to those, who had been 
previously only oppressed. Fear is always cruel ; and I cannot 
doubt that the Barings considered themselves justified in their 
shameful conduct to Mrs. Deacle, not to mention the case of 
Farmer Boyes, or Boyce, and the atrocious execution, or, to 
speak honestly, the legal murder, or murder under legal forms, 
of Henry Cook, for striking Bingham Baring. I mention this 
now, at a period of political calm, not to point indignation at 
misdeeds long since perpetrated, but to awake compunction in 
the breasts of rich men, who, themselves never exposed to want, 
cannot conceive or image to themselves the sufferings of the 
very poor. To them, the reply of the young lady, when told 
that the poor could not get bread, " then why not eat pie- 
crust?" is natural; how can it be otherwise? And yet from 
this class, who are necessarily ignorant of all that it really 
imports man, in his social condition, to know, are nearly all our 
Legislators ; and not merely those who misrepresent Counties, 
but the misrepresentatives of Towns. Colonel Sibthorp may 



LETTERS, ETC. 229 

sneer at Biilwer as an author, and in liis return be contemned 
as an unreasoning soldier ; but tbey are both of the useless 
class. Manchester could not find amongst its active and in* 
telligent population a second member, but must have a rich 
man from London : whilst Liverpool — aristocratic and refined 
Liverpool — must have a Lord, The chosen haunts of idle- 
ness and profligacy have rejected the idle and the worthless, 
who are received and cherished in the hives of industry. 
Brighton, Bath, and MaryJe-bone, are well and truly served 
by men who belong to the people ; vrhilst Manchester, Liver- 
pool, and Derby, have chosen Lords or Lord -lings to attend to 
the interests of cotton, calico, and hosiery ! 

The first day the fine and sturdy Yeoman, with his bold, 
and, it may be, somewhat burly, beaiing, feasted under an im- 
mense Tent, more than a thousand Visitors, to whom he gave 
Food and Drink in ample quantities, a speech after dinner, and 
a dance in the evening. The gathering came far and near ; 
the best proof, if any were needed of the favom-able impression 
he had made in his own neighbom-hood. 

The following morning I was up about half-past three, and 
was shortly after joined by this verv noticeable Man, 'v\'ith 
whom I walked across the Fields in the direction of Michel- 
dever. It was delightful at that hour of a fine stmimer's 
morning to see him quiet, calm, like the time. Xothing 
escaped him. Xot a flower — especially a honeysuckle — which 
he did not figm-atively snift' up if he could approach it ; not a 
feature of rural beauty which he did not notice, and explain in 
what lay its distinguishing excellence. Although living at 
that time constantly in the country, he seemed, in the fresh- 
ness of his joy and enjoyment, like one who had ^' been long 
in dismal cities pent."' My pencil recollections of that day are 
few and scant. 

On the morning following, I was one of a party which pro- 
ceeded to the Chm-ch-yard of Micheldever, and strewed the 
grave of Henry Cook with flowers. Ill-fated youth! hadst 



230 

thou been struck even to the earth, a small gratuity would have 
been offered to thee, and thou wouldst have been envied by 
thy poor comrades for thy luck. In what, then, consists thy 
crime ? Truly thou wert poor. Had a Prince struck Bingham 
Baring, he might have been made a Baronet, as his father 
has since been made a Baron, and the blow would have been 
esteemed fortunate, and have been added to the Escutcheon of 
a Loan Jobber ; but to be struck by a Ploughman or a Car- 
penter, that is the difference. What matter whether it was in 
self-defence or in the resistance of wrong done ? Fear is 
ever cruel, is only appeased with Blood I 

It was touching and painful, an hour after, to find the mother 
of this ill-fated victim of the panic of property, so utterly 
prostrated by the fear of offending the owner of Stratton, 
employed in removing the flowers from her son^s grave, fearful 
lest the wrath of these Parvenu's should follow her and her 
husband even unto the Parish Workhouse, in which they had 
taken refuge, and that this touching tribute to the dead, should 
be remembered in vengeance against the unoffending bereaved 
Parents, driven by the death of their son, in old age, to the 
wretched workhouse of Micheldever. Again, on the arrival 
of Mr. Cobbett, were flowers strewed on the Grave ; again and 
more quickly were they removed by the in soul affrighted 
Parent. I do not know when I have been more affected. 

To you, my dear children, I wish to point out what may 
else escape your attention whilst young — that these oppressors, 
these soul enslavers of the Poor, are either conscious of the 
enormity of their conduct or they are not. If not conscious, 
if totally alienated from all sympathies with their kind unless 
it be in their own especial class, what sympathies, what sources 
of pleasure and pure delight, are for ever closed to them ! 

These are fit and appropriate punishments for them. Plea- 
sures withheld for punishments vouchsafed. 

If they are awakened to the consciousness of the Blood 
they have shed, the Widows and the Fatherless that owe their 



LETTERS, ETC. 231 

bereaved condition to them, think you that vengeance — ample 
though unseen vengeance — has not been taken ? Oh ! never 
doubt hut thatj in some form or other , retribution for misdeeds, 
for taking J or mistaking, the power for the right, will assuredly 
arrive to every man during his life* 

Pleasant was it to see the stout Yeoman, the Country Gen- 
tleman (for such he was in his bearing and general demeanour), 
go over the ground which he had visited under other and 
quieter aspects. " Here lived Mr. . . . and there Tom . . . ; 
they were veiy kind to my sons whilst at school with the 
Parson at Micheldever.'' And the recollection of kindness 
from those who had passed away " from this visible diurnal 
sphere, '' caused his eyes to glisten and his voice to soften. 
The Widow of the Clerg^anan with whom his sons had been 
placed, hearing that he was in Micheldever, sent most earnest 
entreaties that he would not leave the Village without visiting 
her. He refused, saying " it may injure her : she receives 
assistance, countenance, or support, from Baring.'^ Again the 
good lady sent ; he went, abusing her in words, springing, 
however, from, and associated with, the finest and purest feel- 
ings of our nature ; and after a colloquy of some half hour, I 
rejoined him as he descended the steps of the Widow's house, 
his face streaming with tears — weeping like a child. 

Kind and cordial, frank, hearty, and generous, with energies 
and powers of mind unequalled in his day, it will indeed be a 
deep disgrace to the national character, if those who have been 
benefited, delighted, and instructed by his multifarious writings, 
shall not evince their sense of his transcendent powers, in the 
only mode now possible, by prompt contributions to the Statue 
about to be erected to his Memory. 

I am grateful for the delightful days I have passed in com- 
munion with a mind, whose matchless energy was softened and 
attempered by a kindness, which can only have its highest 
value when allied to, or springing out of, great powers. It was 
of this man, thus gifted, that Hunt, after he had become a 



232 LETTERS, ETC. 

personal enemy, said, when asked what was his opinion of 
Cobbett's powers, " I have seen him engage the attention of a 
company for hours by his energy, variety, and the extent of his 
resomxes ; I have seen him the life and soul of every domestic 
or social circle, attracting and engaging the attention alike of 
all — from the child of three years to the old woman of eighty." 
I gratify myself by inserting the two following letters ; the 
first addressed to the Daughter of an old Friend, on his return 
from a visit of recreation, the second addressed to the Father 
upon the death of his excellent Wife. I yet hope that we 
shall be able to profit by a collection of Mr. Cobbett's letters 
to private friends, though I much fear that the value he 
attached to time, deterred him from writing many familiar and 
friendly letters.* In this view, therefore, these letters, as well 
as from their kindness and delicate attention, to those who had 
been heretofore his assistants, are of great interest. 

Dear Miss .... Normandy. Farm^ Aug, 26^A, 1834. 

Your father and mother return in pretty good health ; 
and they have the great consolation to reflect that they owe 
their recovery to the air which their just confidence in your 
prudence and diligence have enabled them to avail them- 
selves of. 

I have to thank you also, which I do most sincerely, for 
that very great service which has been rendered me by the 
great care of your father, at a time when I knew not which 
way to turn. This he could not have rendered me if he had 
not had you to confide his business to. 

I hope that your mother will come here as often as she may 
find it necessary for her health, and I hope your health will 
not suffer on account of your confinement. Your conduct has 

* This economy of time he also carried into conversation. I recol- 
lect his observing, to the clever and pretty girl who ministered to him 
at Sutton Scotney, '' Time is valuable; never throw away your words. 
I never do." 



LETTERS, ETC. 233 

been so excellent, tliat I should have deemed it a neglect of 
my duty had I failed thus to express my sentiments regard- 
ing it. 

I am your faithful friend, 

And most obedient servant, 

Wm. Cobbett. 

Mr Normandy, April dth, 1835. 

Dear Sir, 

I am sm-e I need not tell you what grief your melancholy 
loss has occasioned me. I do not believe that a better human 
being ever existed in the world. Xor is it much consolation 
to know that you must have parted first or last. It is a great 
calamity, and all I can say is that I most deeply lament it. 

Pray remember me to poor little Emma. I wish you could 
so manage as to come here for a while to withdraw your mind 
from the scene. 

I beg you to be assm'ed that I feel for this event more than 
I have felt for any misfortune of my own in my whole life, for 
I never yet had a death in my family. I am, 

Most sincerely yom- friend, 

Wm. Cobbett. 



It is well to bear in mind that the last words of William 
Cobbett were for and concerning the country, and those who 
make the food to be. 

That even when his senses became dim, he still muttered, — 
" I have ever been their" friend. They make all things to 
come: it is right they should have their full share first J ^ 

That he never swerved ; that, contemning impostm-e whilst 
living, he was consistent in his Death as in his Life. 

Peace to the memory of a Great, and, if words have any 
meaning, a Good man. 

* The friend of the agricultural classes. 



234 

LETTEE XLIIL 

My Nearest Friend, May 10th, 1825. 

I have been reflecting earnestly and actively on the 
subject of a Metropolitan University, now in agitation, and 
could conveniently comprise the results in three Lectures. 

On the Histories of Universities generally, the most in- 
teresting Features in the History of the most celebrated 
Universities in Great Britain, Germany, France, &c. Ee- 
duction of all Universities of any name, with respect to their 
construction and constitution, to three Classes. 2. The Mean- 
ing of the Term, University, and the one true and only 
adequate Scheme of a University stated and unfolded from the 
Seed (/. 6. the idea) to the full Tree with all its Branches. 
3. The advantages, moral, intellectual, national, developed from 
reason and established by proofs of History; and, lastly, a 
plan (and sketch of the means) of approximating to the Ideal, 
adapted and applied to this Metropolis. (N.B. The Plan 
in detail, salaries only not mentioned — the particular sums, I 
mean). The obstacles, the favourable circumstances, the pro 
and con regarding the question of Collegiate Universities, 
&c. &c. That I could make these subjects not only highly 
interesting but even entertaining, I have not the least doubt. 
But would the subject excite an interest of curiosity f Would 
the anticipation of what I might say attract an audience of 
respectable smallclothes and petticoats sufficiently large to 
produce something more than, with the same exertions of 
Head and Hand, I might earn in my Garret (to give the 
precise Top-ography of my abode) here at Nemorosi, alias 
Houses in the Grove. For the expense of coach-hire, the 
bodily fatigue, and (to borrow a phrase from poor Charles 
Lloyd) " the hot huddle of indefinite sensations^ ^ that hustle ray 
inward man in the monster city and a Crown and Anchor 
Eoom demand a + , and would an =, after all expenses paid, 
but ragged economy, unless I were certain of effecting more 
good in this than in a quieter way of industry. 



LETTERS, ETC. 235 

I wrote to Mr. B. Montagu for his advice ; but he felt no 
Interest himself In the subject, and naturally therefore was 
doubtful of any number of others feeling any. But he pro- 
mised to talk with his friend Mr. Irving about it ! On the 
other hand, I heard from Mr. Hughes and a Mr. Wilkes (a 
clever SoKcitor-sort of a man who lives in Finsbury-square, 
has a great sway with the Slangi yclept the Eeligious Public, 
and, this I add as a whitewasher^ was a regular attendant on my 
lectures), that the subject itself is stirring up the Mud-Pool of 
the Public Mind in London with the vivacity of a Bottom 
wind. If you can find time, I wish you would talk with 
Jameson about it, and obtain the opinion of as many as are 
likely to think aright ; and let me know your own opinion and 
anticipation above all, and at all events, and as soon as possible. 
We dine on Friday with Mr. Chance. I wish you were with 
us, for I am sure he would be glad to see you. Need I say 
that my thoughts, wishes, and prayers follow you in all your 
doings and strivings, for I am evermore, my dearest friend, 
Yours, with a friend and a father's 
. affection and solicitude, 
T. AUsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 

My kindest remembrances to Mrs. Allsop, with kisses for 
little Titania Puckinella. 

Years have passed since I heard the Nightingales sing as 
they did this evening in Mr. Eobarfs Garden Grounds; so ynany, 
and in such full song^ particularly that giddy voluminous whirl 
of notes which you never hear but when the Birds feel the 
temperature of the air voluptuous. 

P.S. If I undertook these Lectm^es, I should compose the 
three, and write them out with as much care and polish as if 
for the Press, though I should probably make no use of the 
MS. in speaking, or at all attempt to recollect it. It would, 
relatively to my viva voce addresses, be only a way of premedi- 
tating the subject. 



236 LETTERS, ETC. 

It has been charged against the writer of this letter, that he 
had latterly secluded himself from the world, and had confined 
his communications chiefly to inferior and subordinate minds. 
I wish to believe that I have mistaken this TtTiter; I would 
fain persuade myself that he must be a very young man; one, 
who having no settled or satisfactory opinions, neither know^ 
ledge^ experience, or judgment, seeks in an eternal gahhle of 
words, disconnected from thoughts, to impose upon his readers. 
If, however, he should prove to be a man to whom Age has 
brought Evil alone, one, who to restlessness, which is more 
than disease, adds treachery of the blackest nature and in all 
its forms, I would remind him of the communications which he 
made to the man he now slanders, at the time when the neces- 
sities of our gracious and religious King rendered necessary 
the resumption of the hundred guineas granted from what is 
called the Privy Purse to the FeUows of the Society of 
Literature. 

To you, my dear Children, it will be important to know that 
my dear Friend, with impaired health and in old age, found it 
a more fit vocation to instruct others in that Knowledge he had 
with so great labour and research amassed, than any longer to 
waste time (to him most precious) in vain dispute and idle 
colloquies. He comprehended not only the view or the 
objection taken by the clever and restless minds with which 
he occasionally came in contact, but the opposite and contrary 
views or objections, and had established for himself a harmony 
and co-unity, which it was latterly the whole business of his 
life to convey to others — to those who sought his instructions 
and the results of his long experience, great knowledge, and 
most wonderful genius. 

I will frankly own that I dissuaded my Friend from wasting 
his powers upon ungenial subjects and ungenial minds, and am 
therefore open to the charge of having in some measure with- 
drawn him from an arena to which his health, genius, and 
modes of thinking, were alike unsuited. To convey to you an 



LETTERS, ETC. 237 

adequate individual notion or image of the Friend yon have 
lost is with me quite hopeless ; the next thing to this is to 
present to you as many individual pictures or views of his 
mind as are within my power. To begin with the first — 
here is the Estimate formed by one of my earliest Friends ; 
hear what was said of him by T. N". T., now Sergeant Tal- 
fourd, who, more than any man I know, himself a Poet of the 
highest order, is best fitted to appreciate the Poets of our 
time. 



** Not less marvellously gifted, though in a far different manner, is 
Coleridge, who by a strange error has usually been regarded of the 
same school. Instead, like Wordsworth, of seeking the sources of 
subKmity and beauty in the simplest elements of humanity, he ranges 
through all history and science, investigating all that has really 
existed, and all that has had foundation only in the strangest and 
wildest minds, combining, condensing, developing, and multiplying 
the rich products of his research with marvellous facility and skill ; 
now pondering fondly over some piece of exquisite loveliness brought 
from an unknown recess, now tracing out the hidden germ of the 
eldest and most barbaric theories, and now calling fantastic spirits 
from the vasty deep, where they have slept since the dawn of reason. 
The term * myriad-minded,' which he has happily applied to Shak- 
speare, is truly descriptive of himself. He is not one, but Legion, 
' rich with the spoils of time,' richer in his own glorious imagination 
and sportive fantasy. There is nothing more wonderful than the 
facile majesty of his images, or rather of his worlds of imagery, which, 
whether in his poetry or his prose, start up before us self-raised and 
all perfect, like the palace of Aladdin. He ascends to the sublimest 
truths by a winding track of sparkling glory, which can only be 
described in his own language : — 

" ' The Spirit's Ladder, 
That from this gross and visible world of dust. 
Even to the starry world, with thousand rounds 
Builds itself up ; on which the unseen powers 
Move up and down on heavenly ministries — 
The circles in the circles, that approach 
The central sun with ever narrowing orbit.' 



238 

'* In various beauty of versification he has never been exceeded. 
Shakspeare, doubtless, in linked sweetness and exquisite continuity, 
and Milton in pure majesty and classic grace — but this in one species 
of verse only ; and taking all his trials of various metres, the swelling 
harmony of his blank verse, the sweet breathing of his gentle odes 
and the sybil-like flutter with the murmuring charm of his wizard 
spells, we doubt if even these great masters have so fully developed 
the music of the English Tongue. He has yet completed no adequate 
memorials of his genius, yet it is most unjust to assert that he has 
done little or nothing. 

'' To refute this assertion, there are his Wallenstein ; his love poem s 
of intensest beauty ; his Ancient Mariner, with its touches of pro- 
foundest tenderness amidst the wildest and most bewildering terrors ; 
his holy and sweet tale of Christahel, with its rich enchantments and 
richer humanities ; the depths, the sublimities, and the pensive sweet- 
ness of his Tragedy; the heart-dilating sentiments scattered through 
his ^Friend;'' and the stately imagery which breaks upon us at every 
turn of the golden paths of his metaphysical labyrinths. And if he 
has a power within him mightier than that which even these glorious 
creations indicate, shall he be censured because he has deviated from 
the ordinary course of the age in its development, and instead of 
committing his imaginative wisdom to the press has delivered it from 
his living lips ? He has gone about in the true spirit of an old Greek 
bard, with a noble carelessness of self, giving fit utterance to the 
divine spirit within him. Who that has ever heard can forget him? 
his mild benignity, the unbounded variety of his knowledge, the fast 
succeeding products of his imagination, the child-like simplicity with 
which he rises from the driest and commonest theme into the wildest 
magnificence of thought, pouring on the soul a stream of beauty and 
of wisdom to mellow and enrich it for ever ? The seeds of poetry, 
the materials for thinking, which he has thus scattered will not 
perish. The records of his fame are not in books only, but on the 
fleshly tablets of young hearts, who will not suffer it to die even in 
the general ear, however base and unfeeling criticism may deride 
their gratitude.'' 



Quoted the passage from Southey, in whlcli he declares the 
Church to be in danger from the united attacks of Infidels, 
Papists, and Dissenters. Expressed his surprise at Southey^s 
extreme want of Judgment. ^'Any Establishment which could 



LETTERS, ETC. 239 

fuse into a common opposition^ into an opposition on Common 
Grounds, such heterogeneous and conflicting matei^ials^ would 
deserve^ ought, to he destroyed, I almost wish that Southev 
had been one of the audience, fit though few, who attended my 
Lectures on Philosophy; though I fear that in his present 
state of mind, he would have perverted, rather than have 
profited, by them/' 

The prospectus of these Lectures is so full of Interest, and 
so well worthy of attention, that I subjoin it ; trusting that 
the Lectures themselves will soon be famished by or under 
the auspices of Mr. Green, the most constant, and the most 
assiduous of his Disciples. 

That gentleman will, I earnestly hope — and doubt not — 
see, feel^ the necessity of giving the whole of his Great Master's 
views, opinions, and anticipations ; not those alone in which he 
more entirely sympathises, or those which may have more 
ready acceptance in the present time. He will not shrink from 
the Great, the Sacred duty he has voluntarily undertaken, 
from any regards of prudence, still less, from that most hope- 
less form of fastidiousness, the wish to conciliate those who are 
never to be conciliated, inferior minds smarting under a sense 
of inferiority, and the imputation which they are conscious is just 
that but for Him they never could have been ; that distorted, 
dwarfed, changed, as are all his views and opinions, bypassino- 
athwart minds with which they could not assimilate, thev are 
yet almost the only things which give such minds a status in 
Literature. 



240 LETTERS, ETC. 

LETTER XLIV. 

Dear Sir, Nov. 26th, 1818. 

I take the liberty of addressing a Prospectus to you. 

Should it be in your power to recommend either Course among 

your friends, you will (I need not add) oblige your sincere, &c. 

S. T. Coleridge. 

'' Prospectus of a Course of Lectures, Historical and Biogra- 
phical, on the Rise and Progress, the Changes and Fortunes 
of Philosophy, from Thales and Pythagoras to the Present 
Times; the Lives and Succession of the distinguished Teachers 
in each Sect ; the connexion of Philosophy with General Civi- 
lisation ; and, more especially, its relations to the History of 
Christianity^ a7id to the Opinions, Language, and Manners 
of Christendom, at different JEras, and in different Nations. 

" By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

*^ Logical subtleties and metaphysical trains of argument 
form neither part nor object of the present Plan, which sup- 
poses no other qualification in the auditors of either sex than 
a due interest in questions of deepest concern to all, and which 
every rational creature, who has arrived at the age of reflec- 
tion, must be presumed, at some period or other, to have put 
to his own thoughts : — What, and for what am I made ? What 
can I, and what ought I to, make of myself? and in what rela- 
tions do I stand to the world and to my fellow men ? Flatter- 
ing myself with a continuance of the kind and respectful atten- 
tion, with which my former courses have been honoured, I 
have so little apprehension of not being intelligible throughout, 
that were it in my power to select my auditors, the majority 
would, perhaps, consist of persons whose acquaintance with the 
History of Philosophy would commence with their attendance 
on the Course of Lectures here announced. When, indeed, I 
contemplate the many and close connexions of the subject with 
the most interesting periods of History ; the instances and 



LETTERS, ETC. 241 

illustrations which it demands and will receive from Biography, 
from individuals of the most elevated genius, or of the most 
singular character : I cannot hesitate to apply to it as a whole 
w^hat has been already said of an important part (I allude to 
Ecclesiastical Histoiy) — that for every reflecting mind it has 
a livelier as well as deeper interest, than that of fable or 
romance. 

" Nor can these Lectures be j'^stly deeraed superfluous even as a 
literary work. We have, indeed, a History of Philosophy, or rather 
a folio volume so called, by Stanley, and Enfield's Abridgment of 
the massive and voluminous Brucker. But what are they ? Little 
more, in fact, than collections of sentences and extracts, formed into 
separa.te groups under the several names, and taken (at first or second 
hand) from the several writings of individual philosophers, with no 
. Trinciple of arrangement, with no method^ and therefore without 
unity and without progress or completion.. Hard to be understood 
as detached passages, and impossible to be remembered as a whole, 
they leave at last on the mind of the most sedulous student but a dizzy 
recollection of jarring opinions and wild fancies. Whatever value 
these works may have as books of reference, so far from superseding^ 
they might seem rather to require^ a work like the present, in which 
the accidental influences of particular periods and individual genius 
are by no means overlooked, but which yet does in the main consider 
Philosophy historically, as an essential part of the history of man, 
and as if it were the striving of a single mind, under very different 
circumstances indeed, and at different periods of its own growth and 
development; but so that each change and every new direction 
should have its cause and its explanation in the errors, insufficiency 
or prematurity of the preceding, while all by reference to a common 
object is reduced to harmony of impression and total result. Now 
this object, which is one and the same in all the forms of Philosophy, 
and which alone constitutes a wark Philosophic, is — the origin and 
primary laws (or efficient causes) either of the world, man included 
(which is Natural Philosophy)— or of Human Nature exclusively, and 
as far only as it is human (which is Moral Philosophy). If to these 
we subjoin, as a third problem, the question concerning the sufficiency 
of the human reason to the solution of both or either of the two for- 
mer, we shall have a full conception of the sense in which the term, 
Philosophy, is used in this Prospectus and the Lectures corresponding 
to it. 

16 



242 LETTERS, ETC. 

*' The main Divisions will be— 1. From Thales and Pj'^thagoras to 
the appearance of the Sophists. 2. And of Socrates. The character 
and effect of Socrates' life and doctrines, illustrated in the instances 
of Xenophon, as his most faithful representative, and of Antisthenes, 
or the Cynic sect, as the one partial view of his philosophy, and of 
Aristippus, or the Cyrenaic sect, as the other and opposite extreme. 
3. Plato and Platonism. 4. Aristotle and the Peripatetic school. 
5. Zeno and Stoicism, Epicurus and Epicureans, with the effects 
of these in the Eoman republic and empire. 6. The rise of the 
Eclectic or Alexandrine Philosophy, the attempt to set up a pseudo- 
Platonic Polytheism against Christianity, the degradation of Philo- 
sophy itself into mysticism and magic, and its final disappearance, 
as Philosophy, under Justinian. 7. The resumption of the Aris- 
totelian philosophy in the thirteenth century, and the successive 
re-appearance of the different sects from the restoration of literature 
to our own times." 



LETTER XLV. 

My DEAREST Friend, 

The person to whom I alluded in my last is a Mr. 
T .... J who, within the last two or three years, has held a 
situation in the Colonial Office, but what^ I do not know. 
From his age and comparatively recent initiation into the office, 
it is probably not a very influensive one ; and, on the other 
hand, from the rank and character of his friends, he has occa- 
sionally brought up mth him to our Thursday evening conver-^ 
or, to mint a more appropriate term, one-versazione, it must be 
a respectable one. Mr. T . . . is Souihei/^ s friend, and more 
than a literaiy acquaintance to mCj only in consequence of 
my having had some friendly intercourse with his uncle during 
my abode in the north. Of him personally I know little more 
than that he is a remarkably handsome fashionable-looking 
young man, a little too deep or hollow mouthed and important 
in his enunciation, but clever and well read ; and I have no 
reason to doubt that he would receive any one whom I had 
introduced to him as a friend of mine in whose welfare I felt 



LETTERS, ETC. 243 

anxious Interest, with kindness and a disposition to forward 
his object should it be in his power. 

But again, my dearest Friend, you must allow me to express 
my regTet that I am acting in the dark, without any convic- 
tion on my mind that your present proceeding is not the 
result of wearied and still agitated spirits, an impetus of 
despondency, that fever which accompanies exhaustion. I can 
too well sympathise with you ; and bitterly do I feel the 
unluckiness of my being in such a deplorable state of health 
just at the time when for yom* sake I should be most desirous 
to have the use of all my faculties. May God bless you, and 
your little -able but most sincere fi'iend, 
T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge, 



This was wiitten just after the utter, and as then it seemed, 
the hopeless ruin of my prospects. Xeed I say in that hour 
of great perplexity what unspeakable solace and support 
I found in the sympathy and untireable kindness of my 
revered friend, and in his frank, honest, and every way most 
excellent house-mate, Mr. Gillman. Charles Lamb, Charles 
and Mary Lamb, '^ union in partition,'" were never wanting in 
the hour of need : and I have a clear recollection of Miss 
Lamb's addressing me in a tone acting at once as a solace and 
support, and after as a stimulus, to which I owe more perhaps, 
than to the more extended arguments of all others. Believe 
me, my dear son, that in the hom- of extreme affliction, of 
extreme misfortune, there is no solace like the sympathy of an 
affectionate and gentle woman. Then^ their sympathy becomes 
to us strength, it blends with our own sense of sorrow, and we 
feel^ rather than are convinced by any process of reason, that it 
is good. These reminiscences become painful when I think 
that you cannot now, as I had fondly hoped, pay back in kind 
attention and ministrations part of the vast debt I owe. 

'' Hatred of superiority is not, alas ! confined to the ignorant. 



244 LETTERS, ETC. 

The best informed are most subject to jealousy, and to unfair 
representations of new views and doctrines/' 



'* Quoted his short Sketch of Burke from the Biographia 
Literaria. Burke possessed and had sedulously sharpened 
that eye which sees all things, actions, and events, in relation 
to the laws which determine their existence and circumscribe 
their possibility. He referred habitually to principles : he was 
a scientific statesman, and therefore a Seer, For every 
principle contains in itseM the germs of a prophecy ; and, as 
the prophetic power is the essential privilege of science, so the 
fulfilment of its oracles supplies the outward, and (to men in 
general) the only^ test,, of its claim to the Title. There is not 
one word I would add or withdraw from this, scarcely one 
which I would substitute. I can read Burke, and apply every 
thing not merely temporary to the present most fearful condi- 
tion of our country. I cannot conceive a time or a state of 
things in which the writings of Burke will not have the 
highest value.'' 



'^ Observe the fine humanity of Shakspeare in that his 
sneerers are all worthless villains. Too cunning to attach value 
to self-praise^ and unable to obtain approval from those whom 
they are compelled to respect, they propitiate their own self- 
love by disparaging and lowering others." 



^' Of all the men I ever knew, Wordsworth has the least 
femineity in his mind. He is all man. He is a man of 
whom it might have been said, — ' It is good for him to be 
alone.'" 



" I have shown in the Biographia Literaria the great evil of 
too entire domestication. My after-experience would confirm, 
nay, even extend, this. I incline to think that, unless the 
husband is abroad the whole day, and therefore only a partaker 



LETTERS, ETC. 245 

of iiis wife's social parties, that in the choice of their associates 
they should be independent. To exclude all that a woman or 
a man might T\'ish to exclude from his or her help-mate's 
society, might leave the rest of little value, and lead to mutual 
discomfort. The Turkish method is good : they have no 
difference of opinion in that fine country ; but, as our own 
habits and customs are^ different, we should seek to make 
arrangements in harmony with them; and this I think may 
be accomplished. Why insist upon a married pair — ^paired 
not matched — agreeing in the choice of their visitors. The 
less the independence of married people, especially that, of 
man, is trenched upon, the better chance of happiness for both. 
Are there any men to whom the wife has a dislike? why 
should she be annoyed with their presence? Are there 
women amongst his svifes acquaintance who to him are 
ungenial, why force them upon the husband's distaste or 
dislike ? I have known permanent aversions, and, what 
is the same thing, permanent alienations proceed from this 
cause, all which might have been avoided by each of the 
parties simply agreeing to see their o^ia. friends without the 
presence or intervention of the other. In the one case the 
range of the more kindly sympathies may appear to be circum- 
scribed, in the other, dislike is quickly ripened into aversion." 



1832. 



"I fear that the Eevolutionary Spirit which was relinked 
by Bm'ke, and derided by Canning, though driven from high 
places, is not the less active amongst the people. This was 
my opinion in 1817, and it is still more so now, when the 
resumption of cash payments has revolutionised our monetary 
system, and with it has caused the most fearful devastation in 
the fortunes and general condition of the agi^iculturists — both 
labourers and proprietors. If what is charged against Goody 

17 



246 LETTERS, ETC. 

Peel, or Peel the Candidj be true, the epithet " genteelly 
vulgar " is a term of approval to what I should be inclined to 
apply to him. To improve his fortune or his prospects by 
fair means is not denied to Mr. Peel ; but to recommend a 
measure of very doubtful, nay, dangerous policy, merely 
because it. would double his o^\ti wealth, when earnestly ex- 
horted by his father against its fearful consequences, is what I 
dare not believe of Peel (and of him you know I think very 
meanly), even though charged with it openly, and to my 
knowledge never denied. The miserable policy of men like 
Peel will have its reaction during this generation ; for them, 
the problem will be solved, that half is greater than the whole ; 
certainly better for them. The danger does not appear now, 
nay, at the horn- of its arrival, I do not think it will appear^ 
to be from within (and I incline to believe that its manifesta- 
tion must be from without) ; but who can doubt that, if all 
were right at home, AVe, this People of England, could have 
any thing really to fear from abroad ? 

It is quite folly to think that any book, or class of books, 
can be any longer oi general Interest. Even Newspapers, the 
only papers of general Interest as a class, are daily being 
subdivided. The result of gTcat and constant subdivision is a 
daily increasing antagonism — or general indifference of the 
whole to the subject of each. It may be you are right in 
thinking, or rather in hoping, that the greater equalisation, not 
in wealth, for that is the reterse, but, in intelligence and the 
external appearance of all classes, and the gTomng pOwer and 
ultiijjate supremacy of the middle classes, will cause greater 
mental activity, w^ich must result in a daily increasing, and 
ultimately in imiversal, benevolence. I have entertained views 
not dissimilar, as you well know, and tliey are now held, in 
some form or other, by all good men ; but I doubt whether 
any good can come from the use of evil or antagonist means. 
Benevolence and kindly feelings towards all that has life, must 
precede intelligence and mental activity, in those at least who 



LETTERS, ETC. 247 

are to effect any great changes In our social condition. Owen 
of Lanark fulfils this condition, as all his life has been devoted 
to extend and improve the happiness of those under his con- 
trol or Tvithin his influence. He has also the most indomitable 
perseverance, and has attested, by a Life devoted to the most 
disinterested objects, the purity and singleness of his purpose. 
With these qualities, what might not such a man have effected, 
had he not wilfully stumbled over religion, which was not at 
all in his way, and thus impaired greatly his power of doing 
good. 

I recollect writing a very long letter to Mr. Owen, and 
conjuring him, with tears in my eyeSy to avoid this rock ; this 
vexed question of Fate and Freewill ; of which less seems to be 
known, by those who argue upon it, than of any other subject 
of difference. 

" The Priesthood grossly cheat us with free-will ; 
Will to do what, hut what Heaven first decreed? 
Our actions then are neither Good nor 111, 
Since from eternal causes they proceed : 
Our passions, fear and anger, love and hate, 
Mere senseless engines that are moved by fate ; 
Like ships on stormy seas without a guide, 
Tost by the winds, are driven by the tide." 

These lines of Dryden seem to me to express the doctrine 
and its results better than any other I recollect. It is true 
tjie illustrations are now varied, but nothing has been added to 
the argument either in force or variety.'^ 

Wkh reference to the early project of Coleridge, Sou^hey, 
and others, .to form a community on the banks of the Susque- 
hannah, a project, or rather a principle, the practical application 
of which seems now In some form or otiier likely to be tried,. I 
gratify myself, and, I doubt not, shall interest others, by the 
following brief notice from the Friend : — 

" Truth I pursued, as Fancy led the way, 
And wiser men than I went worse astray." 



248 LETTERS, ETC. 

" From my earliest manhood I perceived that if the people 

at large were neither ignorant nor immoral, there could be no 

motive for a sudden and violent change of Government ; and 

if they were, there could be no hope but of a change for the 

worse. 

****** 

'^My feelings, however, and imagination did not remain 
iinkindled in this general conflagration (the French revolu- 
tion) ; and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed 
than proud of myself if they had. I was a sharer in the 
general vortex, though my little world described the path of 
its revolution in an orbit of its own. What I dared not expect 
from constitutions of Government and whole nations, I hoped 
from Eeligion and a small company of chosen individuals, and 
formed a plan, as harmless as it was extravagant, of trying 
the experiment of human perfectibility on the banks of the 
Susquehannah ; where our little Society, in its second genera- 
tion, was to have combined the innocence of the patriarchal 
age with the knowledge and genuine refinements of European 
culture ; and where I dreamt that in the sober evening of my 
life, I should behold the Cottages of Independence in the undi- 
vided Dale of Industry. 

' And oft, soothed sadly by some dirgeful wind, 
Muse on the sore ills I had left behind^ 

" Strange fancies ! and as vain as strange ! Yet to the 
intense interest and impassioned zeal, which called forth and 
strai?ied every faculty of my intellect for the organization and 
defence of this scheme, I owe much of whatever I at present 
possess, — my clearest insight into the nature of individual man, 
and my most comprehensive views of his social relations, of the 
true uses of trade and commerce, and how far the wealth and 
relative power of nations promote or impede their welfare and 
inherent strength.' ' 



LETTERS, ETC. 249 

I have now done. I have placed before you memorials of 
one of the Greatest and Best Men of this age ; in great and 
varied attainments, in the power of placing scattered Truths 
in harmonious combination, and of illustrating them out of the 
Stores of a vast Intellect, by far the most Wonderful Man of 
his Time. 

In these Letters you are admitted, as it were, into the Innei 
shrine ; you hear him commune with his own Soul, I indulge 
the hope that these volumes may not be without their response 
from the minds of those who yet, in early youth, seek earnestly, 
nay anxiously, for Truth; that Truth the test of which is 
Consistency — ^the Harmony of the whole mth the Parts, and 
of each Part mth the Whole. The human face divine is 
blurred and transfigured by being made the impress of the 
Mean and the Selfish ; not unfrequently the most intensely 
elfish, when falsely held to be most beneficent or benevolent. 

Eead the Faces of all you meet in your next half hom-'s 
"walk. How many are there, the expression of which satisfies 
you, that they are happy or possess the conditions of well 
Being ? And why is this ? Is it not chiefly from the minds 
of all men having been trained to be unjust, to seek to become 
possessed of the labour of others without giving an equivalent, 
and being made to consider the greater or less extent to which 
each can cany this practice, as the test of their respective 
talent ? It is this mental robbery, this desire to possess T\4th- 
out deserving ; of wishing the end and overleaping the means, 
which is now soon to find its retribution. Look at those beau* 
tiful women, beautiful, though, as you plainly see, restless and 
disquieted ? And why listless or disquieted ? Have they not 
Food, Shelter, and Clothing? Yes, these they possess in 
abundance and variety ; in an abundance and variety far 
beyond the reasonable (I had almost said the w?2reasonable) 
needs of Human Beings. But they are disquieted because, 
slaves as they are to the External, the Adventitious, and the 
Unnecessary, they require yet more of that of which they have 



250 LETTERS, ETC. 

already too much, just in the sense that the too much of Drink 
or of Food to-day leads to the too much of to-morrow. What 
would be said of a society or a people of whom it was believed 
- — known, that those were held in highest honour who exacted 
and destroyed the greatest amount of labour? And yet is not 
this our case ? Would not a man at the present time, who 
purchased a suit of clothes every day, which he destroyed at 
night, be held as a sort of Divinity by those who uphold the 
present application, or misapplication, of labour? And yet 
this very people, or rather their self-constituted instructors 
who hold, the greater the destruction the greater the benefit, 
shrink from the more rational proposition of Lord Castlereagh/ 
of employing the " surplus population ! in digging holes one 
day and filling them up the next" as an absurdity. The true 
principle — at least that which appears to me such — is founded 
in eternal justice^ as far as those words have any definite 
meaning : it is, that no man shall receive more than he gives ;. 
that no man shall have rights (the very term being its best 
confutation) which do not belong to all ; such Eights invariably 
becoming Wrongs alike to those for whose advantage they are 
exercised, and those at whose expense they are purchased. 

And now, my dear children, once more farewell! The life 
of exercise which I will not yet, nor perhaps again, call labour, 
to which I destine you, will, I hope, whatever else of good may 
result, leave you less of inclination, and your future less of 
necessity, for speculations, which have been, for me, as neces- 
sary as they are distasteful. You shall have your own inde- 
pendence, and by so much your well being (and h.ow great a 
part independence constitutes, you cannot yet know) in your 
own power. Health, springing from, and leading to exercise, 
and cheerfulness ; an utter disregard and dislike of the petty 
externals which are, from custom and the association of weak 
minds, held in disproportionate regard, it shall be the endeavour 
of my future life to secure for you. Believe me, my dearest 
Children, that the highest wisdom is to be found in Simplicity, 



LETTERS, ETC. 251 

whether of Thought or Action, and that all those whom you 
see Slaves to the External and the Unessential, are necessarily 
Unhappy. This comes of concealment or suppression. 

I do not think It would be possible for men to be selfish, If 
Truth, literal and verbal Truth, were the rule, Instead of the 
exception. If men and women were accustomed to '^ sun " 
their minds, to speak openly their wishes and aspirations, 
instead of brooding over them until they become parts not 
merely of the habits, but of the mind itself, we should have 
little vice and less miseiy. It is this tendency of an artificial 
and compKcated society to become more and more insincere, 
which gives me to hope less for the future state and prospects 
of society than I should otherwise do; though I have faith, not 
alone in the absolute progression, as a fact apart from the human 
or conventional better or worse, but in the universal Law of 
Eecoll and Ee-action. 



THE END. 



"Waterlow and Sons, Printers, Carpenters' Hall, London "Wall. 



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